


The Pear Tree

by avoidingavoidance



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Death, Decapitation, Dismemberment, Drowning, Explicit Sexual Content, Eye Trauma, Family Feels, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mentions of Cancer, Mortality, Panic Attacks, Reapers, Scratching, Self-Harm, Smoking, Social Anxiety, Spirits, Vomiting, extended graphic violence, extremely brief erejean, supernatural horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-24
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-01-26 09:10:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 110,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1682876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avoidingavoidance/pseuds/avoidingavoidance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We stopped telling the story a long time ago. Once upon a time, though, people knew that the last person to die in a parish one year would have to hang back the next year and help Death get his shit together.</p>
<p>I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. 'Jean Kirschtein, Death's secretary' doesn't exactly have a ring to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Swim

**Author's Note:**

> i am very very very excited for this you guys
> 
> based off of [this prompt](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com/post/75149060194/what-are-you-saying-your-tags-are-hella-i-read-dem) on my [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)

Have you ever seen that Coldplay music video? You know, the one where the lead singer starts out sprawled on a mattress in the middle of the sidewalk, and then walks backward through the last bit of his life, singing sad shit?

That’s kinda what’s happening to me right now. With a few key differences.

I’m definitely on my back, on the cold, wet ground, staring up at the dark sky. It’s spinny and fuzzy and I’m not really sure if it’s the alcohol or the blood loss.

Regardless, that stupid music video is all I can think about, and I’m really hoping that I don’t walk back through my last pitiful moments.

I don’t want to relive being that stupid ass standing outside, hearing the chants “Ten… nine… eight…,” breathing harder and harder and trying to remember what rational responses are. I don’t want to relive the desperate wish to just fucking disappear. I don’t want to see myself again, turning and choking on a lungful of bummed smoke, coughing into the face of the guy digging a shitty dull knife around between my ribs.

He’s long gone with my wallet and my phone. I’m just lying here. Fucking crying again. I’m pretty sure there’s snot involved. This is pathetic and cold, and I’m _really_ dizzy still. And alone. The world erupts slowly around me in hollow cheers and fireworks, and they glitter so bright and beautiful in my blurred, watery vision.

When I die, my eyes don’t even have the decency to slide dramatically shut. Assholes. I just cough up more blood, on my chin and my cheek and I’m pretty sure out of my nose, and that’s it. That’s the big bang. Dizzy and bright and _lonely as hell._

\--

It’s two weeks earlier, and I’m slouched in the same ancient, smelly chair as always, unaware that I will be able to count my last few calm moments on one hand.

This is not one of them.

Instead, I’m staring at the carpet, worn thin by years of people like me staring at the same spot. I wonder if they couldn’t get it together and do their homework either.

“Jean,” my therapist says, her voice steady in the still air of this tiny room. “Can you tell me about it?” She’s not surprised when I don’t look up at her, instead chewing at my jagged thumbnail. 

“I just couldn’t,” I mumble, and I know I’m being unhelpful. I know that I’m supposed to walk myself through this, that she’s just my guide on my journey to being okay, but it’s still too recent. I’d put it off all week, and in a fit of feeling guilty for not doing it, I’d tried to do it on my way here and it blew up in my face. 

It’s sad. I’m 23 years old and today I couldn’t bring myself to look the security guard at the desk in the eyes and ask how his day is going. 

Instead I had just stared at the streak of grey running through his short curls, like a badger, and stammered. And he’s used to it, so he’d smiled, but I was already stewing in the failure. 

She gives me a minute, and before she can prod me again, I rake my hand through my hair and sigh. “I didn’t do it at the grocery store. So I tried downstairs.”

“With Mitch?”

“Is that his name?” I know that’s his name. She knows I know. I run a hand down my face and look at her pale blonde hair twisted over her tiny shoulder. “I went up to the desk and signed in, and he asked how it was going, and I just… couldn’t.”

“Did you remember your rational response?”

“No.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I just wanted to leave.”

“Mhm,” she says, and she uncrosses and crosses her legs. Her foot must be asleep again. “What was your SUDS?”

Subjective units of disturbance scale. Basically, how fucked up I felt by that situation. “Eighty.” It only goes up to one hundred, and that’s usually the point at which you’ll find me crammed in a bathroom stall and trying to remember how to count back from twenty. 

Therapy is supposed to give me back my control, to help me get over this bullshit I deal with. I’ve been getting better. 

Right now, I’m not feeling so great. Right now, I just feel like numbers scrawled across a page, a spread of diagnostic codes and severity ratings and distress ratings… points on a numerical scale. A series of counted breaths and coping mechanisms, and all I want is to be back at my apartment under my blankets and dead asleep.

I look up at her, trailing my eyes over her shoulder and through her hair and across her cheeks, and if she didn’t know me she’d probably think it was sexual. It’s anything but. “I don’t think I can do this today.” I pause, my eyes hovering on a little scar on her right cheek, almost unnoticeable. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Jean,” she says, and she smiles kindly. “It’s okay to have bad days. How can I help you make it home okay?”

Running my hand through my hair again, I drop my gaze to my fingers, loose in my lap. “Can I call a rain check on the homework?”

“Of course. Here,” she says as she hands me a green whiteboard marker. I take it with a sigh. I know she won’t make me do the eye contact practice today, but the process of standing and crossing the short distance to the whiteboard to write my rational response still makes my heart beat a little faster.

My thin, slanted handwriting scrawls out the words I’ve memorized, that I’m supposed to remember when I want to hide.

_There is nothing in my eyes that makes me less human._

\--

I’m not particularly religious. That being said, I kind of expected pearly gates or vast nothingness.

What I get instead is a tree.

It’s huge, its trunk thick and its roots gnarled and spread wide around me. Its branches spread up bright against the black sky, and little lights scattered through the leaves twinkle like stars. It’s got all its leaves, too, which is weird considering it’s New Year’s Eve. 

Well, was, rather. I imagine it’s a new year now. 

Oh, _fuck,_ wait—

I rip my shirt up and feel shakily at my ribs, but there’s no stab wound. There is a scar, though, pink and spidery like it happened half a decade ago and my body hasn’t quite come to terms with it. My shirt is clean, too, and when I feel around my face my tremulous fingers find only five-hour stubble. No blood clotted against my lips, nor streaming from my nose.

I look up at the tree again. I’m breathing fast, too fast. I pull up the neck of my shirt and breathe hot into the fabric, closing my eyes.

This is reasonable panic, I’m pretty sure. I am 100% sure that I just died. Like, for real. I’m dead, and now I’m at this tree, and that is more than enough reason to panic. 

A tidal wave of white noise shoves all other thoughts out of my head and I crouch down, breathing shakily into my shirt and waiting it out.

Someone’s talking to me. How long I’ve been here, I have no idea, but someone’s here with me. 

“Jean?”

I open my eyes and look at her knees. Her voice is soft, feminine, and she’s leaned down on her knees to get closer to me. I glance up at her. She’s wearing all black, like she’s in mourning, and her bright red hair shines like fire in the cool night air. 

She’s the brightest thing in this place.

“Are you Jean Kirschtein?”

Swallowing, I pull my shirt back down and look at her properly. She’s got these bright hazel eyes, almost gold, and a kind smile too warm for this dead place.

I nod. She extends her hand to me, tiny and pale, and I take it and let her help me to my feet.

Rational responses.

I’m like a foot taller than her. God, she’s tiny. Kinda reminds me of my therapist.

“It’s okay to be afraid, Jean,” she says with a wide smile. There’s the faintest dusting of a wide scar spread across her neck and chest, dipping into her shirt, and I wonder if she’s dead too.

She hasn’t let go of my hand yet, but she squeezes it and pulls me along behind her. “I was scared too, when I first came here. But you get used to it. It’s not as scary as it looks at first.”

My voice cracks when I speak for the first time. “Where is ‘here?’” I clear my throat.

“Mm, that’s hard to answer.” She steps up onto a tall root, like a stair, and I heft myself after her. She’s leading me toward the trunk of the tree. “If you ask Levi, he’ll say,” she turns to me and frowns, puffing out her cheeks and putting on a rough voice, “’It’s the end and the start, and a shithole all around.’” She smiles brightly. “I think that’s just how he imagines it. It _is_ a place of beginnings and ends, though, don’t get me wrong.”

I blink down at her, and stumble over a root I hadn’t noticed. “So, what, Purgatory?”

“Kinda, yeah,” she chirps. She hoists herself up onto another root, taller than me now, and when she turns to face me she squeezes my hand again. “Don’t be afraid, Jean. You’re not alone.”

She drops my hand, and I notice a guy slouched at a desk behind her, haphazardly balanced on the roots and definitely tilted. The guy sitting at the desk has his feet kicked up on the wood like his shit isn’t slowly sliding toward me. Like he’s not sitting at a fucking desk in a fucking tree, in fucking Purgatory.

I’m not really sure how to start this conversation.

“Welcome,” the guy sneers, pulling a neat notebook off the desk and into his lap. “I’ll assume you have no idea why you’re here.”

My voice sounds tiny when I reply. “I’m… I died, right?”

“Yes.”

“… What now?”

The guy, a brunette with neat hair and frown lines, twirls a pen between his fingers. “You were the last person to die in your town this year. Looks like you drew the short straw.”

“I don’t…” I look around me, but there’s nothing but stars and leaves. The redhead’s gone. “I’m not catching your drift.”

“Bright one.” I frown. He continues unfazed. “You guys stopped telling the story a long time ago.” I watch him twirl the pen. The shit on his desk is sliding further. “Last person to die has to take over for the guy before him.”

I’m grinding my teeth by this point, anxiety giving way to irritation. 

“ _Oberour ar maro,_ ” he says slowly, and I have no idea what that means but that doesn’t stop the words from sending a chill through my gut. “Death’s gopher.”

I think I’m starting to get it, and I really really fucking wish I didn’t. I look up at him, and his tired eyes are scanning his notebook. “Welcome,” he says again, before flicking his gaze to mine. “Death of Trost.”

My stomach falls through the floor.

Then I’m angry again.

“Don’t I get any fucking say in this?” I curl my hands into fists, the sleeves of my hoodie almost hiding them. “Isn’t it enough that I died? You can’t seriously expect me to go back and fucking be the grim reaper—”

“I can, and I do.” He makes a mark in the notebook and slams it shut, then digs in his desk drawer. “It’s only your dinky little town. It’s not like you have to be Santa Claus or some shit.”

“I don’t—I can’t do this! I know those people!”

“Then you can take comfort in shepherding their souls,” he says as he stands, and he pulls a fucking… what is that, a stick? A _stick_ out of his desk. He tosses it to me, and I manage to catch it, and when I look up at him again there’s someone in front of me. He’s wearing a key on a thin leather string around his neck. I start grinding my teeth and take a step back. As far back as I can without falling off the fucking tree, anyway. 

“That’s Eren. You’re his escort.”

I swallow, and for the love of Christ I wish this dude would get the fuck out of my face. I grimace at him and try to get that message across.

“You’re Jean, right?”

Oh my god. 

“No shit.” I grip the stick tightly, and its sharp little twiggy branches dig into my palms. Why am I holding a stick? This is fucking awful. 

My heart is racing.

He moves to the side, turning back to the guy, but before he can speak a tall plume of smoke flares up behind the desk. A person with thick glasses and a messy ponytail leans out, swear to god, and whispers in his ear. He grimaces and moves away, then turns back to us. 

“Out of time. Play it by ear, Eren.”

Eren nods, then turns to me with a grin.

Then he’s grabbing my shoulders.

“Marco Bodt,” is all he says.

He pushes.

We’re falling.

I squeeze my eyes shut, bracing for an impact that doesn’t come.

\--

I’m falling.

I know this dream. I’ve had it a thousand times, but that doesn’t matter to the part of my brain that lights my senses on fire. I still feel the pull. I still feel the pressure. I can feel the ground rushing up at me and I’m fucking terrified.

When I stop, it’s not because I hit the ground, but it’s sudden enough that I may as well have. 

My pulse roars in my ears, my blood moving a hundred miles an hour, and when I rip my eyes open it’s the worst this nightmare can possibly be because there’s someone there, and he’s looking at me, and he’s _way too fucking close._

His eyes are glassy and unfocused and dark but I can still count the flecks of gold, and good god he _sees_ me.

He’s upside-down. Or maybe I am. Who knows anymore. Regardless, his face is alien from this angle, and I can’t rip my eyes away from his no matter how much I can feel my brain trying to explode.

The air is thick. I’m floating, and he’s floating, and I’m staring stupidly into his eyes so deeply that I almost miss the freckle at the corner of one of them. 

We’re underwater. We must be, because moving my hands is hard and pushing against the air is tiring. 

I’m not wet. He is, though, and his short black hair waves slowly over his brow, and his eyes are getting dimmer and dimmer.

I feel trapped. I’ve forgotten my rational responses and my scales and my breathing exercises, and all I can remember is _Marco Bodt, Marco Bodt, Marco Bodt._

I squeeze my eyes shut, breaking the contact, and I can breathe a little easier here in the dark. I can remember what I’m here for, in theory, but I’ll be fucked if I know how to go about it.

When I open my eyes again, his are closed, and I notice that the spot at the corner of his eye is just scratching the surface. His face is a constellation of freckles swirling in the broken light filtering through the water behind me, above us. How did he get here? What is this?

Eren’s voice filters through my frazzled mind then, and I know what I’m supposed to say.

“Hey,” I croak, my voice thick and faded between us, and he opens his eyes again. I stare into him. His eyes focus a little, flicking between mine, too close to make eye contact without weird saccades. I lick my lips and swallow, and if we were on dry land I’m sure I’d be sweating. I’m fighting the rising silence again. “It’s time.”

“Oh,” he responds. At least, that’s what his lips form, the soft syllable trapped in a tiny air bubble that must be his last, and it brushes my cheek as it passes to the surface.

Something shines weakly at his chest. It seems like it should be so much brighter.

Eren’s voice again.

_‘Grab it.’_

I can’t.

I know what I’m supposed to be doing but there’s no fucking way it’s this. No.

My heart is still hammering, too fast to be healthy, and my blood pressure is spiking so hard my vision spins and narrows. The thunder had been muted when I’d stared into him, the way all sound fades out right before I get bad, but it’s back now. It’s okay. Breathe.

I grab his jacket and I don’t know exactly what happens next, but it fucking happens and my teeth are gritted so hard my head hurts. The world is an explosion of water and shards of ice then, interspersed with tiny snowflakes, and when I pull his head above the surface of the water, he doesn’t cough. He doesn’t move. 

Fuck, he’s probably dead.

Wait, no. That’s why I’m here. Shit.

So where is he?

I shudder and grip his soaked jacket tighter, staring at the wet chunks of hair plastered to his forehead, his skin pale from the freezing water and from the whole no-air thing. I look around, and I see where he must have fallen through the ice, because the edges of the hole are ragged and thin and the snow clustered around it has what must be the tracks his fingers left as he tried desperately to grab on.

The same way I’d blown us out of the ice, I make it to the shore, and _Jesus_ this dude is heavy. I drag him onto the snow, searching desperately for someone, _anyone._ I don’t know CPR. 

_‘Dude, grab it,’_ Eren says, and I curl my shaking fingers into the fading light. It’s so warm, and I feel like tendrils of it wind between my fingers and hold me. My hands are ice cold.

I can’t.

I shove hard, and the light sinks back into him, fading from my fingertips. Eren’s bitching. I don’t hear him.

I hear snowmobiles, though, and when I shout toward the sound I don’t have a voice but I can feel the pull. They decide of their own accord to meander in this direction.

The voice that echoes deep in my skull is sarcastic, biting.

 _‘Nice first reaping,’_ he says, and I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t feel guilty, though, because I never wanted this shit job to begin with. _‘Pretty sure you did the direct opposite of what we came here to do.’_

“Fuck off,” I mutter, moving off to the side and watching a teeny little woman perform what appears to be incredibly successful CPR. The guy’s coughing, gasping, rolling onto his side, and she’s patting his back, and Eren floats up beside me, his hands shoved in his pockets. 

He sighs.

_‘Marco Bodt’s lucky day.’_

\--

Trost is a podunk little town filled with old people. Apart from my rare case, homicide never happens here. Most of the people who die here are elderly, sick, and generally become a topic of conversation for the remaining old people that Sunday at church.

As for the young people, most of the ones with any sense leave and don’t worry about looking back. 

If any of them are like me, when they go to a good school they lie and say they come from Portland, which is near enough that it’s not unbelievable and sounds a fuckton better than “I come from a place that’s lucky to have a McDonald’s.”

As for why I came back… well, I did say that the ones with _sense_ leave for good.

\--

We follow them to the hospital. I’m curled up in the corner of the ambulance, trying to stay out of the way, but it becomes very apparent to me that I’m moving unseen.

It’s not much of a change.

“You know,” Eren says, his voice stronger now. He’s leaned against the back doors, watching the EMTs pump life back into Marco Bodt’s pale body. “You’re just making this harder.”

The guy’s clothes are torn, but they would’ve been nice. There are scrapes on his legs, his side, his arm. From the ice.

“Where will he go?” My voice is small, and muffled by my forearms crossed on top of my bent knees.

“Where he’s meant to.” I look up at him. He fucking bugs me. Shit, they all do, with all this mysticism and vagueness. “The world doesn’t run on wishes, Jean. When people die, they go home for a while, and when it’s time for them to come back, they do.”

I’m silent for a while. This is too much, too fucking much. Why couldn’t I have died a second later? 

Or better yet, not at all.

My heart clenches in my chest.

The ambulance bounces in a pothole, and Marco Bodt jostles in his bed, and his pulse is weak and fast but it’s there.

“What about me?”

I feel Eren glance down at me. God, his eyes are intense. They must be green. Green eyes are the brightest, the deepest, and they change colors a thousand times before you give up on memorizing them.

“We’re together for a year. You gotta get the hang of this, though. Lost souls turn bad if they’re left to wander.”

I can feel my expression turning sour. I snort at him. “A little more warning would have been good.”

“Sometimes these things happen short notice.”

“I’m painfully aware,” I grumble, trying not to think about my own recent experience with the unexpected.

He doesn’t respond. 

By the time Marco Bodt has a room and a respirator to himself in Trost’s dingy hospital, I’ve discovered that gravity no longer applies to me. 

It’s weird, the whole floating thing, but it’s kinda fun.

I can sit on the ceiling and the blood doesn’t rush to my head. Whether it’s because of my transient existence or because I probably don’t have blood anymore, I’m not sure, but the world looks new upside down. Different.

Eren hovers beside me, studying me, and I try not to notice.

“Do you want some practice?”

I flick my eyes over to him. His eyes are green. So fucking green. I close mine and take a deep breath.

“Is there really no way out of this?”

“It’s nature’s law. It’s been this way since before men came, and it’ll be this way when you’re gone.”

I sigh and scrub my hands down my face. 

“Fine,” I mumble.

He nods.

“Duncan Balto.”

\--

Duncan Balto is not the same as Marco Bodt.

His light is darker, and compared to the flashing alarm lights around him shrieking about the catastrophe that is his heart monitor, it’s dim and easy to miss. His eyes are wide and dull. The technicians working around him fade into blurs, and I just stand on the ceiling over him. It keeps me out of their way.

“Grab it,” Eren says, his voice soft. 

I look at him out of the corner of my eye, then reach up. The room is small. I don’t have to reach far over my head.

Duncan Balto’s light is cold and a little slimy. It shivers in my hands, recoiling from my touch.

There’s a soft sound coming from it, like static. Like breathing and whispers.

It sounds afraid.

I pull it up from his chest, then turn to Eren. “I don’t… have to eat it, do I?”

He laughs. He actually laughs. The sound is clear and honest, and truth be told it sounds like something I’m not going to hear very often.

“That’s my job.”

“Oh my god.”

He shrugs, then braces his shoulders. “Feed it to me.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, just long enough to gather myself. Then I open them again, and when I look at Eren, he is not the same.

He’s dark, and his eyes are black and sunken, and every part of me wants to run screaming. His hair is long, shaggy, dangling over his face, and when he opens his mouth his jaw doesn’t stop. It drops and drops and drops, impossibly wide, and the sounds that come out of the blackness are hollow echoes of the faded shriek now emitting from the light in my sweating palms.

Oh my god.

My heart’s pounding in my chest, and my blood pressure spikes, and when my fingers curl around this slippery remnant of Duncan Balto it feels like it’s begging for my mercy.

I’m sorry, Duncan Balto.

I hold the light out to Eren’s gaping maw and just barely manage to yank my fingers away from the snap shut of his jaw. His teeth crack together like the sharpest clap of thunder and he swallows, and Duncan Balto is no more.

The silence rises. 

Even the sound of my stuttered breathing has stopped. 

The lights go out.

\--

I had hoped it would take longer for him to find me. But I guess these reaper things must be great at hide and seek.

Or maybe he knew to look for me hiding in the gap between Marco Bodt’s bed and the wall.

His hands are normal again, tanned, rough fingers long and slender. His nails are bitten short, no longer claws.

“Are you Death?” My voice is tiny, so fucking small and squeaky.

“One of them, yes,” he murmurs, and he stands at the foot of the bed and doesn’t try to come closer. “You’re my ankou.”

“Your gopher?” The desk jockey’s words echo in my hollow skull.

“Is that what Levi said?” Eren snorts, and his bare toes curl against the gaudy, cracked linoleum. “You’re my guide. You’re the shepherd, and I’m the devourer.”

I bury my face in my knees.

This is too much.

“I can’t do this,” I manage thickly.

“I’m sorry,” Eren murmurs, and he really, truly sounds it. “It’s only a year. You get… used to it.”

I don’t know how to reply to that, so I don’t, but the terror is boiling off into rage, and I’m trying to remember what comes before seventeen.

I can’t remember in time.

“I didn’t want to die.” 

“No one does.”

I glare up at him. My hands are shaking. “I didn’t fucking _want_ any of this.”

He blinks at me slowly. That just pisses me off more. I stand quickly, and the shift makes blood rush to my head, and I’m screaming at him before I can think to stop myself. “I don’t _want to be fucking dead!_ Fuck, I had a shitty couple of weeks before—that, but come the fuck _on,_ how do I _fucking_ deserve this shit?!”

“It’s not that—” he starts, but I’m not listening.

“Take me back. Put me back in my fucking body, _give me another chance!_ ”

He runs a hand through his shaggy hair, but I can see annoyance building across his face. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“The fuck it doesn’t! Did you eat me?”

“Clearly not.”

“Then why the _fuck_ can’t you put me back?!”

His eye twitches, and his brow furrows dark. “It doesn’t fucking work like that, Kirschtein. Leave off and grow up.”

Something snaps.

As my fist connects with his face, the world spins black.

I’m getting bad again.

\--

It turns out, despite being dead, I can still very much feel pain.

I’m on my back again, sprawled across the hospital roof, and I’m fairly sure my face has been punched clean off.

Eren’s sitting next to me, smoking a cigarette.

Comical, Death himself smoking a cigarette. It’s like one of those satirical cartoons from the 80s.

He notices I’m awake, and holds the cigarette out to me. His face looks worse than mine feels. I take it with shaking fingers and inhale deeply.

“Where’d you go?” he asks quietly.

I breathe smoke slowly and inhale again. “I black out sometimes.”

“No shit.” He pauses. The moon is bright tonight, dyeing the scene blue, and I’m shocked that it’s not cloudy for once. “Sorry about your face.”

My smoke puffs out and covers the stars for just a moment. “Sorry about yours.”

\--

Eren doesn’t give me shit about putting off my botched first reaping. I can feel him watching me whenever I roll past the guy’s room and purposely ignore him, especially as he starts getting better.

The echoing doctorly murmurs of ‘incredible recovery’ and ‘anoxic stress’ follow us down the hall. My time is running short, but at this point it would be cruel to reap him. I figure, if his luck’s already run out it’s only a matter of time.

The first week or so is uneventful, and Eren has no problem letting me know so. We’re mostly confined to the narrow hallways of the tiny hospital. Like I said, no one ever fucking dies here but old people, and even they’re slow going. The miracle of modern medicine.

I spend my time attempting to haunt vending machines. It doesn’t work.

“You’re not really a spirit, you know,” Eren says, grinning at me. I flip him the bird.

Marco Bodt leaves the hospital on January 15th. He donates the abundant flowers he’d received to the nurses. I know because I see them littered all around the nurse stations on his floor, with signed thank you cards in his curly handwriting dangling from vibrant roses and pale daisies. Every single one of them has an earnest smiley face made out of the two exclamation points following “Thank you!!” and each one is addressed to a different nurse by name.

I spend a lot of time staring at those cards.

Eventually, no more names pass Eren’s lips and we’re both violent with boredom. We leave the hospital. If we need to come back, it’s not like it’s that hard. Trost isn’t big.

I give Eren a little tour, but apparently it hasn’t changed much from when he was here last, fifteen or so years ago. I’m not surprised, nor can I disagree.

As we’re sitting on a pair of damp swings with the early dawn light starting to filter grey through the clouds, I dig my toe into the gravel under me. “So how old are you, anyway?”

Eren shrugs, drawing a lame picture with a stick. “Old enough, I suppose.”

“Do you go somewhere different every year?”

He nods. “It depends on the order people die in. Some places don’t even get reapers these days. You humans have been busy. There’s a lot of you now.”

I furrow my brow. “How did a shit little place like Trost get one?”

“I’m not sure… the list isn’t really something that’s explained to us.” He drops the stick and stares up at the quickly moving clouds. It’s windy today. Nothing new. “We go where we’re needed.”

“And you said you were here, what, fifteen years ago?” He pauses, then nods and glances over at me. I bite my lip and think. 1999… ah, that’s the year my mom and I lived in Kansas with my aunt, because the pollen was really bad here. Or something.

1999 is also the year my dad died. I was 9. There wasn’t a funeral.

I snap out of that train of thought. “What happened when you were here?”

Eren purses his lips and squints. “I don’t really remember.” He shakes his head, and the change in subject is very apparent. “Hey, Jean.”

“Mm?”

“Don’t you wanna, like… go to your funeral or anything?”

I blink, then stare at my toes, old-ass chucks half-covered in little grey pebbles. “Not really. I hate seeing my mom cry.”

“No unfinished business?”

Leaning my head against the rubber-coated chain link, I bite my lip again. Honestly, the only thing left undone was my homework for my therapist. I think I owed a guy at work five bucks, too, but I’m pretty sure Thomas will make it without. I was between projects, no relationships, halfway through my lease…

“I think I forgot to pay my cable bill.”

Eren’s silent for a moment, and then he badly contains a laugh. “Well, that’s something.”

I shrug and kick at the rocks. I’m not in the mood for my homework. I don’t know that I’ll ever be, honestly, and it’s not like I can report success to my therapist. I wonder if anyone told her that I won’t be coming anymore.

When we get bored of the swings, we meander the town for a while, and I can’t help but wonder if this is how it’s gonna be all fucking year.

We end up at the Starbucks. It took over the little coffee shop sometime when I was at college in California, and ever since then has been a plague. It’s right near my therapist, though, so I have to admit to sinking a shameful amount of time and money into this damn place.

It’s like a sore thumb amidst a sea of stubbed toes. 

I go in just by habit, and when I remember that there’s no point in standing in line it’s almost worth crying. 

“If I’m gonna miss anything,” I mumble under my breath, staring into the stale pastries. “It’s gonna be coffee.”

Eren pats me on the shoulder, then turns and makes a soft sound. I follow his gaze, and it lands on—

I fucking hate small towns.

Marco fucking Bodt is sitting in the corner of the goddamn Starbucks, his legs crossed under him in the huge brown leather chair, and his fingers are wrapped around a warm, giant paper cup, and he’s smiling the most fucking brilliant smile. I’ve never seen him right-side up before, let alone conscious. I kind of wish I never had.

He’s surrounded by people who are asking him questions and telling him to go _home,_ dammit, and to my horror my little therapist is among the group.

“Marco,” she says, reaching over to pat his knee gently. “Please just take a week? Your data will still be there, and we rescheduled your clients anyway.”

He tilts his head and smiles at her, and his hoodie slides off his shoulder. It’s too big for him. Based on how fitted the rest of his clothes are, I’m guessing it’s not his. I wonder if the coat that the ice shredded was his only one.

“I’m fine, really, Christa,” he says warmly, and his hand comes and covers hers. His is so much bigger. “You guys are sweet. Thank you for everything. The flowers, too. Tell Mike thank you for the ones he sent, too, they smelled amazing.”

“You know how he is,” a lanky blonde across from him pipes up. He’s tying his long hair into a messy bun. “You also know he’s gonna kick your ass if he catches whiff of you around the clinic fresh out of the hospital.”

Marco Bodt sighs and sips his beverage, eyes trailing toward the ceiling in thought. God.

“Ugh, Erd, you’re right,” he acquiesces, leaning his chin on his palm as he sinks further into the cushy couch. “I feel like I’m wasting time, though, and right at the start of a new year…” He sticks his lower lip out in thought. 

“Most of your clients were more than happy to reschedule anyway,” Christa says, waving her hand. “They’re all overwhelmed from travelling for the holidays.”

“Did DF answer his phone?”

“Surprisingly, yes, but he almost hung up when it wasn’t you.”

“Mmm… how was visiting his mom?”

“Marco!” Christa laughs and smacks his knee, and he spreads his fingers in a defensive gesture. “I didn’t ask! Stop trying to work, you’re not sneaky. Go home and rest.”

He hangs his head, then scratches the back of his head and laughs. The sound is soft, but it’s the kind of sound that could easily rise in volume, the kind that threatens to fill the air and linger. He’s like a fucking Disney prince. I kind of want to punch him. At least, that’s what I assume this tightening in my guts is.

I can’t fucking deal with this shit.

I crash into the bathroom and slam myself into a stall, and when I bury my face in my hands I can think a little more clearly.

I hear Eren vaguely from outside the stall, his voice muted. “This is why waiting is dangerous. You start figuring out just how loved they are.” I have no response to that. “It’s only going to get harder, Jean.” I don’t have a response to that either. I scrub the heels of my hands against my eyes until I’m seeing stars, and then a little more for good measure.

“I’m fine.” I back out of the stall and crack my neck with a grunt. “He’ll step in front of a bus, or choke on something, and I’ll get him then. It’s no big deal.”

Eren’s staring at me, his gaze calculating, and I examine the metalworking of the key hanging against his chest. 

“I’m fine,” I repeat quietly, and I turn away from him and leave before he can detect my bullshit.

Marco Bodt’s standing now, pulling his hoodie back over his shoulder and grabbing his bag. He slings it over his chest and thanks his friends again.

“When is Bert coming back?” The guy slouched into the couch across from him spins his phone in his fingers as he asks.

“He left Tel Aviv at some ungodly hour yesterday, and if the weather cooperates he should make it over for late dinner tonight.” He gives this quirky half-grin and crosses his fingers.

“Do you want company on Saturday?” Christa reaches up for his hand as she asks and he takes it gladly, swinging their hands between them. “We can watch bad Korean horror movies on Netflix and drink box wine like good adults.”

He laughs, louder now, and god dammit it’s exactly like I knew it would be. He’s gonna summon baby animals next, fuck. “Yes, _please_. I totally lost track of everything but work over the holidays.”

“We all did. I’ll text you when I’m on my way over, okay?” Christa smiles brightly. The little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes haven’t changed since I saw her last. He sits down on the little table between them, fuck my life, and his thumb rubs soothingly over her pale knuckles. 

“Text me if you need anything, okay? You should really be taking time off too.”

Her smile flickers, and my heart sinks. “I know,” she murmurs, examining the nails of her free hand and squeezing his. “My clients this week couldn’t reschedule, though.” 

The blonde guy, Erd or whatever, leans in and rubs her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Christa nods, the smile returning, albeit strained. “I will be, yeah. JK was—” my heart skips a beat or seven, and I inhale sharply, “—he was really doing well.”

“Have you talked to Mike about it?”

She nods, tucking her hair behind her ear. “He said if I needed to, I can take time off, but I don’t really want to just sit around my apartment, you know? I need to be doing something. It’s the only way I can accept it.” Taking a deep breath, she smiles at the others. “I’ll be okay. Thank you, guys.”

I need to leave.

My blood pressure’s spiking.

I slide through the door after some dude and lean against the window, scrubbing my hands down my face again. It’s raining, and threatening to rain harder with the way the clouds look. The drops feel nice against my face, calming. When Eren meanders out after me, I know he’s watching, but he doesn’t ask any questions. I wonder how I’m gonna stand a year of that bright green stare.

I take deep breaths until Marco Bodt comes out, still holding his coffee and pulling his loose hood over his head.

As he starts up the street, pushing headphones into his ears and striding quickly against the misting rain, Eren and I trail after him. Probably more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. That’s my excuse.

“Have you met him before?” I blink over at Eren when he asks, and he casually studies the clouds while we wait at a stoplight.

“No,” I reply, reaching into my hoodie sleeve to scratch at my arm. “The girl was my therapist, though.”

Eren raises his eyebrows and looks over at me, and I rub the back of my neck. “Fuck,” he murmurs, and I kind of have to snort at that. ‘Fuck’ is very right. Makes this shit a thousand times more complicated, honestly. I don’t want to make Christa more miserable than she seems to be, and from the looks of it they’re very close friends. 

Fuck, indeed.

Marco Bodt doesn’t live far from the clinic and the Starbucks, in a little apartment on the fourth floor of a wide brick building. This dude, though, I’m fucking shocked he hasn’t died already because he has horrible street-crossing habits. We ride the elevator up with him, and the lights in the car flicker off for the slow ride from second to third, but he seems unfazed, checking his email and nodding his head to the music playing faintly from his headphones.

His apartment is small. He’s got a decent bed, several overloaded bookshelves, a little table, and a reasonable TV, but it’s still definitely a studio apartment. The exposed brick walls don’t seem to hold much heat. It kind of reminds me of my little shithole apartment, but mine had drywall. Not that I put up many decorations. A poster for some horror movie that came out a while ago, a photo of some sunflowers my mom took years and years ago… yeah, actually, that might be it.

He drops his bag on the bed, along with the contents of his pockets, and I notice then that he’d been wearing jeans. They hang a little loose on his hips, and when he moves to unbutton them I turn and examine the calendar stuck to his fridge. It’s still on December. Initials and times are scrawled in that same curly handwriting all through the month, with barely a gap around the holidays. 

I hear him moving around his quiet apartment, through the bathroom, digging in drawers, and god how can he stand the silence? I used to put on music the second I came home, if my earbuds ever even left my ears. He seems perfectly content, though, and when he settles himself in front of a laptop, glasses perched on his nose, he’s wearing that huge hoodie and a ridiculous pair of sleep pants with… are those moose? Moose on them.

God fucking dammit.

“I don’t think he’s gonna choke to death yet,” Eren says quietly, and I sigh and run my hands through my hair.

“I’m trying to find a reason this guy has to die,” I murmur after a while, fingers laced behind my neck. I tap my toe against the hardwood floor, trying to fill the silence, and Eren lets me stew in that for a while before he speaks again.

“Sometimes there isn’t a reason. Just like with you.” I flick my gaze over to Eren. He’s curling his toes again. “Sometimes it’s just… bad luck.”

“You guys aren’t big on second chances, huh.”

Eren sighs and fiddles with his key, looking at him over his shoulder. “We would be, but… it’s not right, you know? He was out, and ready to go, and then he’s back where he started instead of at rest.” Eren chews on his lip for a moment, then turns back to me. “That’s something he’s gonna start feeling.”

My stomach twists, and my heart gives a little jolt in my chest. The reasons I should have fucking taken him to begin with are rising, and the reasons to take him now are fighting for relevance. It’s not like I can go back in time, though. At least, not that I’m aware of.

Marco Bodt sighs and pushes his glasses up onto his head, cowlicks sticking out at all weird angles, and he rubs at the bridge of his nose. He’s got work open, against Christa’s requests, but I know that look. That is the look of ‘I’m not getting anywhere with this.’ 

Instead, he pulls his phone out of his loose pants pocket, and I notice then that the thing is comically fucking huge. There is no way that thing fits in his pockets regularly. He taps out a text, long thumbs somehow managing the wide keyboard, before he flops his head into the crook of his elbow with a heavy sigh. 

After a while, he turns his head, and it looks for a second like he’s staring right at me, and for the brief second that I forget my heart pounds. Then I realize, mostly due to the complete lack of ‘what the fuck is this skinny loser doing in my apartment,’ that he’s just staring out the window at the now-pouring rain.

He bites his thumbnail and flicks his eyes lower, long black eyelashes brushing his cheeks.

I’m not sure how, but I’m entirely fucking sure I’ve never seen a lonelier human being in my life.

“Eren,” I croak, my hands hanging numb beside me. “Why did this have to happen?”

He doesn’t answer me, but I know having the answer won’t change a fucking thing.

I have to reap Marco Bodt.


	2. Those Who Are Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hindsight is 20/20, and that firm kick in the ass is only getting stronger. I need to do something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i have a tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
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> special thanks to [tumblr user gonnagetnaked](http://gonnagetnaked.tumblr.com)

It doesn’t make sense.

He has good, caring friends, a stable boyfriend, an apartment, and a job where he sees clients and helps them get better, but when he goes home, he suddenly becomes… so small. 

Yes, it’s the fucking second week of February and I’m still on about this, and I still haven’t taken him. Fuck.

On the upside, I now know for sure that I have some kind of telekinesis from the great beyond, because this luckless motherfucker almost got hit by a bus going way over the speed limit, and somewhere between my heart jamming my throat closed and the thunderous roar of blood in my ears, I pushed against it and the fucking bus screeched to the lane in front of him, which thankfully got his attention.

He looked startled. I was half passed-out on my ass on the sidewalk, clinging to the street sign with shaking hands.

Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, I discover when I grouse my way into the clinic after him, and Mitch the security guy asks if Marco has any plans.

“Oh, we’re going out to dinner later tonight!”

Mitch nods and smiles, and Marco smiles right back like the fucking sun itself and returns the question.

Mitch is taking his wife to see ‘one of those weird foreign films’ and then he’s taking her out for dinner. He bought her a dress just for the occasion.

Marco seems genuinely interested. God. I stare at the back of his head while he asks about Mrs. Mitch. He has a few grey hairs sprinkled through his well-kept undercut. I haven’t even looked in a mirror since I left for the New Year’s Eve party, god only knows what I look like.

He’s still talking. Jesus, Marco, you’re gonna be late.

“Oh, I’m running late for a client,” Marco says, pulling his phone out and spinning it right-side up. He smiles apologetically and wishes Mitch a good day, and I have learned in my single month of stalking the shit out of him that when Marco tells you to have a good day, he means it. From the heart.

Prince fucking Charming. Gag me.

Following him has proven interesting for me, though. He apparently specializes in agoraphobic patients, trying to help them conquer their fear of the overcrowded outside world, and his clients absolutely love the shit out of him. I guess he’s pretty good. Not better than Christa.

Also, his patients flunk out their homework almost as much as I did, if not more. Good to know I’m not alone.

His office is a cramped, messy closet on the fifth floor. I’d seen Christa on the third. Might explain why I never saw him. Eren falls through the floor of the elevator as we ascend, scaring the bejeezus out of me and doing exactly nothing to Marco.

“Fuck, dude,” I grouse, giving Eren a healthy stink-eye, and he rolls his at me.

“What’s up your ass today?”

I shrug and pull my hoodie sleeves down, making to move off the elevator after Marco, but Eren grabs my elbow and yanks me back in. I raise an eyebrow at him in question. The elevator lingers unsummoned as I lean against the wall, pushing my hands into my empty pockets. I don’t even miss my phone anymore, not like it’d do me much good.

“What are you doing?” I look up at Eren as he asks and raise my eyebrows, and he crosses his arms. “Like, how long are you planning on tailing this guy like Casper the lonely ghost? If something happens, I’ll know before he does, and you don’t seem to be too invested in pushing him along.”

Shit. I guess he saw the bus thing. He’s taken to wandering, I think, ‘checking stuff out’ as a way to combat the mind-numbing boredom that is living Marco’s life second-hand.

I run a hand through my hair and look for patterns in the wood paneling behind him. “What else am I supposed to do, man? Except for the hospital and that one at the old folks’ home, we haven’t done shit since we got here.”

“I don’t know,” Eren sighs, leaning against the opposite wall. “Develop a new skill. Read a book or something. Anything that is less weird than this.”

“Yeah,” I laugh, not bothering to hold the sarcasm. “I’ll learn a new language. That’ll do me well when this job is up. Oh wait.”

He scrubs his hands down his face and lets out a muffled, irate, “God shut up.” 

I talk over him. “I’m losing it, dude. There isn’t shit to do around here, in case you haven’t noticed. Dying only made it a thousand times worse. This at least lets me wander around and pretend I’m occupying my time.”

He chews his thumbnail, staring at the worn tile floor of the elevator, and before he can speak the doors slide open and a few people move into the elevator. I shuffle around them awkwardly, because I’m still really grossed out by people walking through me, and Eren stifles a snort.

“Listen,” he says, poking his head around the tall blonde standing half-inside him. Gross. “Let’s go back and talk to Levi. It’s been a month, maybe there was some kind of mistake.”

I nod. “How do we get there?”

I really don’t like that grin. I like the tight grip on my wrist even less, and when the elevator floor drops out from under us with no fucking warning, I promise myself that I will pretend that girlish scream never happened. Forever.

\--

“There has got to be a better way to get here,” I manage as I kneel on a knotted mess of roots, breathing the thin, cold air and hoping to god that it chills my pounding heart. I never had a problem with roller coasters, but fuck, I also had a seatbelt then.

“Nah,” Eren mumbles, standing next to me. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Just like everything else, huh?”

“So cranky,” he chides, and I’m really tempted to punch him in the fucking kneecap. Grating my nerves. Some of us have been doing this for slightly less than an eternity. “Hey, do you still have that stick?”

I blink, then sit back on a root. “What stick?”

“You know,” he says, rubbing the back of one leg with his foot. “The one Levi gave you when he assigned you to me?”

Oh. Right. The stick. The one that had poked holes in my palms right before Eren tackled me into a fucking endless abyss. How could I forget. “No idea what happened to that thing, man.”

“Aw, what? I liked that one. It was pointy.”

I squint up at him, and he’s looking somewhere off in the distance. “The fuck are you on about?”

“Stick’s kind of important, Jean.”

“Didn’t look like much.”

“Yeah, well, neither do you.”

“Fuck off.” Putting actual vicious energy into fighting with Eren got old and painful a while ago. His bark is definitely more irritating than his bite, although the dude can throw a mean right hook. I wonder if my busted face looks like Stallone’s yet.

“Eren!” I look up at that familiar voice, and the scarred-up redhead bounces over the roots toward us. She moves like she has the place memorized.

“Hey, Petra,” Eren says smoothly, scratching the back of his head. “Levi around?”

“Meeting with Erwin. What are you doing back here?”

I’m chewing on my thumbnail. Eren hums and laces his fingers behind his neck. “I think I’m in the wrong place. This guy’s parish is as close to dead as it can get without me getting involved.”

She tilts her head and taps a finger against her chin. Petra, I guess, is her name. I hadn’t asked. “He seemed pretty sure of it…”

“If I have to roll around another nursing home searching for wheezy old people I’m gonna lose it,” Eren grumbles. “I’ve never seen a slower turnover.”

I snort, digging a hand in my hair, and I’m pretty sure they both look at me. I don’t know what to say, though, so I just keep staring at my shoes.

“He’s gonna be done soon,” Petra continues after a minute. “I guess, just hang around for now? He knows you’re here.”

“’Course,” Eren says, flopping down next to me on the root. It’s a wonder his bony ass doesn’t hurt. 

Petra sits on a root relatively across from us and crosses her wrists over her knees. “How’s it going, Jean?”

I blink up at her, and she smiles at me. God. “Boring,” I grumble, leaning my head into my forearms. Maybe she’ll go back to talking to Eren instead of staring at me. I’m still kinda dizzy from falling into wonderland here. 

She hums. “It’s not usually like that… only two in almost a month and a half, that’s pretty strange…”

Eren yawns loudly, clearly not one for speculation, so I peek up at Petra again. “We’ve got nothing but old people, so there’s a lot of well-stocked nursing homes,” I supply, and she raises her eyebrows.

“Oh,” is all she says after a moment, before another pair of feet join us. 

Desk jockey is way shorter than I remember. Damn. How am I taller than the entire afterlife?

“You’re in the right place,” the guy says irritably, his hands in his pockets. Eren sighs next to me and stands again.

“Are you sure?” Goddamn, I can _feel_ the icy glare desk man levels Eren with, and he understandably takes a step back. “Alright, sheesh,” he murmurs, putting his hands on his hips. “Where’s Armin?”

“How the fuck should I know?” The crabby midget turns on his heel and strides away, presumably to hide behind his lopsided-ass desk. Eren turns to Petra and makes a vaguely questioning sound.

“I think I saw him midway up,” she says, and her fingers lace together easily where they hang between us. Her hands are tiny, delicate, but somehow a little rough around the edges. “Erwin’s got him doing some research project or another, digging out the archival stuff. It’s a mess, I don’t envy him…”

“What about you?”

Petra sighs and leans her chin in one palm. “Hanji has me on an assignment. It’s been a few years, I’m glad to be doing something other than greeter service. They’re nuts, though, the complexity of their plan.” 

Eren grunts, and doesn’t ask questions, instead turning to face the tree a little ways in the distance. These roots extend like roads into the darkness, farther than I’d think was natural, but given the size of the damn tree I’m not that surprised. I look up at it, up at the lights sparkling in the bright leaves, and try to trace the branches up to the top. The peak is hidden in the stars. It’s almost like the thing doesn’t have edges at all.

“Levi’ll flip shit if he finds out you lost the branch,” Eren murmurs, scratching at his cheek. I raise an eyebrow. “Let’s see if Armin can grab us one.”

“Okay, what exactly is it with the stick?”

Eren shakes his head and extends his hand to help me up, which I take somewhat gratefully. Apparently while I was squatting on the root, my ass and my leg both managed to fall asleep. I rub his hand-ness off on his shirt after I’ve gotten my feet under me, and he scoffs and elbows my hand. I just give him a lopsided grin.

It’s actually a little fun to fuck with him. 

He’s not getting off easy, though. “Seriously. Stick. Spill.”

“Armin explains it way better than I do,” Eren says, waving his hands. “Thanks, Petra,” he says as he starts toward the tree, and she gives me this warm smile as I pass and give her a nod. 

We climb across and over and under, drawing closer, and by the time we hit the trunk the vastness of this place has become overwhelming. I swear I’d been right at the trunk when I talked to Levi the first time, but from here… from here it’s like one of those redwoods you read about, the ones that have lived for a thousand years and grown thick and scraggly with every layer of bark. It’s surreal. 

We climb the thick branches, barely finding footholds in the cracks, and it occurs to me that it’s been a long time since I climbed a tree. What was it… it must have been fourth grade I climbed last. I wonder why I stopped. 

Eren climbs up onto a wide, thick bough and leans down to haul me up. I try not to look down. 

“Hey, Armin,” Eren yells, walking along the branch toward the leaves, his stride casual, comfortable. 

“Up one more,” comes a voice, and a blonde with a long, swinging ponytail pokes his head out a good few feet above Eren. Eren grins widely and jumps, hands catching the edge. He flips upside-down easily, then curls his legs around the branch and swings himself up. I just stare up at him. There’s no way I’m jumping that. I look around instead, and that’s when I notice a monstrous, leaning stack of books at the end of my branch. Several of them, actually. They’re balanced haphazardly on winding offshoots, leaves sticking out from under the piles.

Gravity doesn’t apply to them either, it seems, and now I’m wondering why I had to climb up here.

“So are you coming or what?” I look back up, and Eren’s watching me between his feet.

“Uh, yeah, gimme a sec.”

There’s a branch midway between the two and a little to the side, so I don’t have to jump, and I use that to pull myself up level with them.

“This is Armin,” Eren says when I sit on his other side, and I lean forward and give him the nod. He returns it with a smile. “He’s our glorified librarian.”

“Whatever,” the little blonde mumbles, closing his monstrously large book and setting it beside himself.

“So what,” I mumble, lacing my fingers in my lap and kicking my feet. “You guys have a whole society here? What for?”

“Death is a busy thing,” Armin says cheerfully, and I kind of have to squint at that. “Especially since there are so many of you now.” I nod and stare off into the void, trying to find the edge.

“Why is limbo a tree?”

I feel them both looking at me, and I glance at them out of the corner of my eye. “Is that what you see?” Armin asks, clearly interested. He leans toward me, bracing himself on Eren’s thigh. The brunette’s just casually leaned back on his hands, only mildly curious. 

I’m fucking nervous. My palms are sweating.

“What, is that not right?”

“Everything is right,” Eren mumbles, squinting up into the leaves. “No two perceptions are exactly the same.”

I look at him, then at Armin, who nods before speaking. “Things run a little differently here, Jean.” I don’t remember telling him my name. “If we were bound by the same laws as the living, we’d just be another government, right?”

“So, what, you’re excluded from reality?”

His smile widens. “Reality is what you make of it.” I stare at my hands, then dig the heels of my palms into my eyes, trying to make sense of that. I can’t quite wrap my head around it, and when I drop my hands again to say so, the world has changed.

I whip my head around. We’re in a giant fucking library. It’s like the Sistine Chapel of libraries, huge and ornate and impossibly stocked, books of all sizes and shapes, and the smell of the pages is ancient and rooted deep.

I guess I’m making mouth-sounds, and Eren’s laughing at me from where he’s perched on a windowsill, framed by dust motes shining like embers in the sunlight.

“You can make whatever you want if you try hard enough,” Armin says from where he’s curled in a plush armchair, surrounded by the stacks of books from the branch below us, and I’m very sure that I’m gaping like a fish.

Eren leans against the window, squinting out of it against the light with his legs curled under himself. 

“What do you see, then?” He looks at me as I ask, blinking slowly, and a short chuckle is the only answer I get. Armin’s buried in his book again.

So much for that. I sigh and look around, up at the vaulted ceiling, at the warm beams of sunlight lighting the room bright and fiery. The hall seems to go on forever, lined the whole way with towering shelves. It does seem like the kind of place that would be a librarian’s wet dream.

“Eren,” Armin says softly, and Eren’s lips tighten a little. “When are you gonna ask?”

“Do I have to?”

The blonde smiles at him, raising a thick eyebrow, and I look between them. “I wanna hear it. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good laugh.”

Eren looks over, astoundingly sheepish, and gives Armin a pained stare. “Please don’t tell Levi,” he says, almost whining. This is the first time I’ve seen him look like this, like he’s worried about being in trouble. I kind of want to cackle at him, but I hold it in. Barely. I’m still not sure whether I’m in trouble or not.

“How did you lose it?”

“Ask fucking… captain responsibility over here,” Eren grumbles, pointing at me dismissingly. 

“If you’d told me I was supposed to hold onto it—”

“What, did you think we gave it to you for shits and giggles?”

I glare at him, leaning forward onto my knees. “I don’t understand anything about this place, let alone the importance of a thorny-ass stick,” I grate out. “I dropped it somewhere, so what?”

Eren sniffs petulantly. “I liked that one.”

“If he lost it,” Armin interjects, putting his hands up between us. “It probably wasn’t a good fit for him.”

I rake my hands through my hair, standing and pacing. So _fucking_ annoying, thank god it’s only a year. Only a year I have to play their damn games. They must really be bored.

Armin senses my frustration and closes his book again. “Jean,” he starts, leaning toward me. “It’s a tool.”

“What, like a… like a screwdriver?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” the blonde says, tapping a finger against his lips. “It’s complicated. It is what you need it to be, I suppose. A weapon, or a passage between worlds, or a place for Eren to hide when he’s exhausted.”

I stare at him. His eyes trail across the faded, painted ceiling. After a while, I squint at the designs in the thick carpet and try to process that. “So… a sonic screwdriver.”

Eren snorts. “You fucking nerd.”

I flip him off and look back up at Armin. He’s smiling at me again, wide and comforting. “Comparable,” he says, and he puts the book on the arm of the chair and stands. “Come on.”

Armin leads us down a tight spiral staircase, skipping down the creaking metal in a way that kind of makes me choke. I have to grip the rail tight. I’m not entirely sure that my feet are where I think they are, or when this dream will fall away again. 

We continue on the ground floor, shelves looming far above us, and it seems like we walk for just a moment when we hit a broad, old wooden door. Armin leans his weight into it and opens it, letting the light in, and the air is warm and summery outside.

Clouds stained orange drift lazily above us. Cicadas whirr in the balmy air. It’s too warm for my hoodie. I unzip it as I trail down a path of flattened grass, following the long blonde ponytail bobbing down the hill toward a garden.

“Did you make this place?” I look around as I ask, trying to take in a hundred different trees lining the border around the monstrous building we’d come from, each a different color, a different season almost, and Armin hums thoughtfully.

“I imagine so, but at the same time, I doubt it.”

Fucking. Of course. No such thing as a straight answer here.

Armin crosses into a little fenced-off area, filled with flowering bushes, and meanders around between them until he finds what he’s looking for. It’s taller than the rest of the bushes, round and encroaching on the plants around it, bursting with clouds of white flowers. I peer at it. Eren walks past me and buries his arms in it. He doesn’t seem bothered by the thick, long thorns jutting from the branches, instead contented by them. Almost relieved.

He buries his face in a poof of flowers and closes his eyes, hands searching deep within for something. Armin rests his hands in his pockets and smiles softly. 

“What is he doing, exactly?”

Armin blinks up at me. His eyes are wide and bright, the kind of blue you only hear about in fairy tales, and my gaze wavers before it falls back to my shoes. 

“He’s looking for a new branch, to replace the one that was lost.”

“Here,” Eren says, right before he chucks one at me. It doesn’t have any flowers, but it sure as shit still has thorns, and they are just as sharp as they look. “Try to hold onto this one, okay?”

I stare down at it, squeezing a thorn, and Armin chuckles. “You can trim those. Don’t mind him.” I nod blankly, trailing my fingers along the dark wood. This one feels… I don’t know. Different than the first one. Like the thorns are arrayed in a way that I can grasp it without stabbing myself. It just _fits_ somehow. I turn to Armin to ask about it, but he speaks again before I can. “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter.”

… Really, though? I grimace, and the blonde laughs, his hair falling behind his shoulder as he does. 

Now who’s the big fucking nerd?

“You guys should probably get back,” Armin says, turning back to Eren, who raises his eyebrows.

“What, no parting story time? No tall tales of flaming seas?”

“Next time.”

Eren meanders up next to me, running a hand through his hair. “I’m gonna go talk to Levi again before we leave. See if I can wriggle any information out of him.”

Armin nods, turning back toward the library, and I trail after him, still holding the damn stick. A weapon, I can understand, but everything else it’s supposed to do is a mystery to me.

We make it halfway up the winding path, the warmth starting to make me drowsy, before Eren stops cold and stares off to the side. I turn to him, eyebrows raised, and he gives me a hard stare as he reaches out and fists a hand in my sleeve.

“We have to go.” Oh no.

“Wait, shit—”

He doesn’t give me time to protest before he’s shoving me, and I’m falling again.

\--

It’s raining. I can smell the wet grass in the air all around us, potent and muddy, and under that is something… heavier. A stench I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered.

I open my eyes, and Eren’s standing next to me, his hackles clearly raised. I follow his gaze.

We’re in the cemetery. The old one on the edge of town, with squat headstones mostly too worn to be read. The one people avoid. My eyes follow the lines of graves, jutting out of the ground like crooked teeth, until I find the cracked, headless statue of what used to be an angel, rising out of the mud on an angle. 

There’s something there. Digging. Snuffling.

“Eren,” I breathe, anxiety crackling in my chest. “What is that?” 

He doesn’t answer me right away, his posture moving into a fighting stance. “What happens when the ankou doesn’t do their job.”

I swallow. He doesn’t need to hint further. My fist tightens around the stick. 

The digging thing whines, its back hunched, and I lean closer to Eren. “What do we do?”

“Reap it.”

I look at him, then back at it. It’s twitchy, mobile, frantic. There’s no light to be seen near it. The clouds above us swirl darker, the rain falling harder, and I am fucking terrified. My heart slams against my ribs. 

“How, exactly?”

A flash of light above us, blindingly bright. I grit my teeth in preparation for the thunder that’s going to follow.

The thing has stopped digging. It tenses, then raises itself off of its knees.

The crash. It’s deafening. 

Eren’s moving, his feet heavy as they squish through the grass, and the thing whirls toward him and unhinges its jaw, and the ringing in my ears rises and devours whatever sound comes out of it.

The stick is heavy in my numb hands. My feet are stuck in the mud, sinking deeper like quicksand. 

All I hear is ringing. Eren’s changed, the transition so fast I barely notice, and when he throws a punch, the thing catches his hand and slams a filthy palm against his face. His jaw opens. Howling wind shoves me from behind. The thing narrows its eyes and draws its mouth closed, and that’s about when I realize that it is a she, and she looks something like a mix of rage and terror.

I’m breathing hard. The ringing clears to pounding. Eren’s roar fades into my ears. 

God, he sounds _hungry_.

He tilts his head sharply and sinks his jagged teeth deep into the woman’s arm, and she whines louder, her hollow eyes widening. 

Eren didn’t expect the kick she levels at his head, so when her blackened foot cracks across his ear, he goes down, his neck twisted awkwardly to the side.

Then she sets her eyes on me.

Oh fuck.

She’s fast as hell. I stumble backward, tripping over my own feet and slipping in the grass. When she tackles me, I fall on my ass, shoving the jagged edge of the stick against her slimy throat. Except it’s not a stick anymore.

What the fuck.

The branch is long and smooth now, thick as the handle of a bat in my hand, and while she’s choking against the pressure on her windpipe, I follow the dark curve of the wood jutting out to the side.

The metal glints in the grey light, drops of rain shimmering and sliding down to the brushed razor edge.

It’s a fucking scythe.

I have to freak out about this later. Later. Right now, this woman’s teeth are gnashing at me, clacking together, black smeared over the sharp, cracked edges, and oh my god she’s going to fucking kill me, because her nails are raking harsh across my forearms. She’s not moving through me. She’s moving against me.

I’m gonna fucking die. Again.

Her thin black hair drips wet against my face, long and scraggly, patches missing from her rotting scalp.

Oh my god.

I jolt my knee up into her bony stomach, feeling her frail ribs crack under the force of it, and when she wheezes and buckles I twist and chuck her the fuck off of me.

Her limbs flail in the air. I roll to the side, trying to avoid cutting my own fucking arm off with my fucking scythe. It’s so awkward, so clumsy and heavy, the blade dense and tilting the balance of the weapon. I shift it in my soaked hands, the wood slippery and shining, and light flashes above us again.

She rolls into a crouch, leveling me with her endless stare. She snarls. I swallow.

 _Crack_. She lunges.

Eren tackles her from the side, completely feral and wild, locking his jaw over her throat and fucking _shaking_ like a wolf tearing at a deer carcass.

She screams, her dirty hands scrabbling at his shoulders and tearing his shirt, but another fierce tug of Eren’s predator teeth wrenches her wail into a bubbling blackened gurgle.

Thick bile bubbles from her torn throat, popping and splattering, the stuff coating her face and his jaw and streaking in the rain.

His jaw tenses, the howling damned muffled against her grey flesh. I’m sinking.

_‘Reap it!’_

I don’t—

My grip tightens around the scythe, my entire body shaking and frozen. 

“I don’t—”

_‘Take it, Jean, fucking use the scythe!’_

Her fingers scrabble at him, pulling and pushing and yanking on his soaked, stringy hair, and rain hammers against me, and I hear his snarl echoing over the thundering in my ears.

I move without thinking. I’m shocked that I manage to sink the monstrous blade into her sagging eye socket on the first shot, but her head splits open and black slick and globby grey explode across the metal and Eren and me like a smashed pumpkin.

The blade keeps the scythe steady, buried in her skull and the ground, so when I fall to my knees and puke like the fucking _Exorcist_ the handle hovers above me. Lightning casts its shadow on the ground in front of me. That only serves to make me sicker.

I’ve been dead for a month and a half but apparently no one told my stomach that.

_‘Feed it to me, Jean, come on.’_

“She’s right there,” I warble, my voice thick and raspy, and I gag again. “Do it your fucking self.”

‘ _ **Jean**_ —’

“ _Fine!_ Fuck!”

I keep my eyes trained carefully on the grass as I crawl back toward them, and he unlocks his jaw from her torn flesh and kneels on the other side of her.

Her soul is slimy and black. There is no light to be found. It just bubbles up from her emaciated chest and winds up between us, swirling like a corkscrew.

I gag again when I wrap my fingers around it. It’s like a fucking slug, disgusting and squishy, and my grip quakes violently. Eren opens his mouth, his black eyes sunken and wide with anticipation, and when I yank the chilly slug out of her and hold it toward him, it wiggles like a worm until Eren’s teeth snap shut around it.

A flash of lightning. He inhales the rest of it.

I vomit again between us. Where her body was just a second ago is now just a patch of crushed, wet grass. 

My vision is tunneling, narrowing, and the silence is rising as I gasp for air and find only rain.

_“Jean!”_

I jolt and stare up at him wide-eyed, and his eyes are bright green and staring right into mine. 

I could fucking pass out.

“Jean, get it together! Don’t go into it.”

Lightning. Pounding rain. My head hurts.

_“Don’t go into the dark.”_

His voice rattles around in my skull. The world stops spinning so damn fast. I rip my eyes away from his and toward the sky, and the boom of the thunder is distinct from the roaring of my heart.

I close my eyes and let the rain drench me further. It absolves me for the moment of the violence, the discord.

I collapse onto my side with a gasping sob, and for once I don’t hate myself for how hard I fucking cry.

\--

The stick fits against my ass cheek in my back pocket rather well, I discover later. Eren and I sit side by side on top of the Starbucks, watching the clouds shift and lighten and give way to misting mid-afternoon rain. The black sludge went the same way as her body, I presume, because aside from mud and grass stains, I’m clean. I kick my feet against the green plastic sign idly.

“Eren.”

He blinks slowly, leaned back on his hands, and grunts in response.

“Is that what he’ll become? If I don’t do this?”

Eren doesn’t answer. But he doesn’t really have to, I guess. I only asked in the hopes that he’d say no.

“How did we miss her?”

“We didn’t miss it,” he says finally, his voice low. “It must have been left over from another year. You guys went fifteen years without a reaper, you know.”

I look at him out of the corner of my eye. His reluctance to acknowledge the woman she was does not escape me. “Do they always look like the people they used to be?”

He scratches at his ear and sighs, biting his lip. “Is that what you saw?”

“Don’t pull that magic school bus choose-your-own-reality bullshit on me, Eren, I’m asking if they look like the humans they were once.”

He levels his intense stare at me, considering me for a while before he answers. 

“That’s not what I see.”

\--

It rains for a week straight. Not unusual around here. 

I haven’t reaped him yet.

Instead I’m here, creeping outside his window and watching him and his boyfriend stare at the floor. Bert’s holding Marco’s hands, having dragged the chair next to the bed, and Marco’s holding tight onto Bert but his lip is shaking. His lip shakes when he’s mad. 

They’ve been fighting recently. Eren crosses his arms across his chest, leaning his shoulder against the brick.

He’s given up on bitching about it. Now he’s just waiting. Same as me.

Marco stands suddenly, running a hand through his hair, and I can’t hear what he’s saying but his lip isn’t shaking anymore. Bert shakes his head and reaches up for Marco, mumbling something. Marco turns away, running his hands down his face.

This isn’t the worst fight they’ve had. Marco looks out the window, hands over his mouth, and he seems to take a deep, shuddering breath before he turns back to Bert, climbs into his lap, and crushes their lips together.

That’s new.

I wheeze awkwardly, but instead of turning away, I watch Marco fuck his tongue into Bert’s mouth. I watch Bert stand, holding Marco close, and throw him onto the bed. The point that I turn away is Marco yanking his shirt over his head while Bert fumbles with the catch of Marco’s jeans, mouthing sloppily down his flat stomach.

The half-chub I’m sporting is no big secret, so I don’t bother trying to hide it. Eren stares at me, eyebrows raised.

“I didn’t know you were gay.”

I furrow my brow and look up at him. His eyes are curious, rather than accusing, which is something I honestly hadn’t expected. “I’m not,” I mumble, leaning against the bricks. It’s weird standing on nothing four floors up. The tightness in my pants is fading, thankfully. “I’m just… me.”

Eren blinks. “Have you ever tried with guys?”

Ugh. I drop to the dumpster under me, then hop off onto the wet ground, stuffing my hands in my pockets as I march down the street. 

“You know,” Eren says, keeping pace with me easily. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“I know that.”

“Do you like girls better?”

I walk faster and bite the insides of my cheeks, turning down the narrow street toward our pathetic public library. May as well attempt to do something with my time that isn’t peeping. 

Eren falters for a second, and I know he fucking gets it.

Yes, hi, I’m Jean Kirschtein, and I lived 23 years and died without so much as a half-baked handjob. Fuck off.

Trost’s library is shit. Nothing on the occult, mythology, theology… fuck. I burn through half a badly-yellowed Nancy Drew novel before I about throw the damn thing out the window.

“Should we tell Levi about the… the spirit?”

Eren looks down at me from where he’s sprawled on top of a rickety shelf, pulling the magazine off his face. “Why?”

“Well…” I stuff the little yellow hardcover back onto the shelf and stand, stretching out my spine. “I don’t know, man, I’m fucking bored.”

“You’re not the only one.”

I lace my fingers on my head and squint up at him. “Is there any reason we have to be here in particular? Why can’t we hang out at the tree? Or whatever the fuck it is.”

Eren sighs, dropping the outdated Cosmo behind his head and coughing at the plume of dust it kicks up. “It’s equally as boring up there, and time passes way slower there too. You’d go nuts.”

I groan and lean my head back against the metal shelf. “Maybe we can get Petra or Armin to tell us about their projects.”

“Probably not.” He hops down in front of me, bare feet slapping against the wood floor. “That’s not the kind of information that gets shared with people on the ground.”

I scrub my hands down my face. This is irritating. There isn’t shit to do and Nancy Drew is not honestly that intelligent. I haven’t gone back to my apartment, but I hadn’t planned on it. No need for stuff anymore. It’s not like it’d be useful anyway. 

By the time I’m annoyed enough to troll past Marco’s window again, he’s standing by the door wearing that huge hoodie and nothing else. Bert’s standing in front of him, holding his face in his long, tanned hands, leaned down to press their foreheads together. His lips move subtly, probably mumbling, and Marco’s eyes are closed but he nods. When he tilts his chin up for a kiss, Bert doesn’t hesitate to lean in and give him one, soft and sweet.

When Bert leaves, Marco fiddles with the edge of the hoodie and stares at the floor.

God damn it.

After a while, he meanders over to the window and leans his forehead against the glass, staring down at the wet street. He nibbles idly on the edge of his sleeve.

It’s not cute.

He flicks his gaze up toward the clouds, bloodshot eyes unknowingly meeting my gaze, and today must be a good day even in the face of my skull-crushing ennui because I don’t start sweating right away.

I try not to think about that lost woman, but I think about her all the fucking time. How scared she was. Dirty, hungry, lonely, and so _angry_. If I bothered to sleep anymore, I imagine I’d have nightmares. The cold sweat kind.

Staring down at Marco, my brain fizzles out before I can even entertain the idea of imagining it.

“He knows something’s wrong,” Eren murmurs next to me, and I don’t have the heart to hope that it’s because his relationship is tanking. 

I have to reap Marco. Before he ends up lost.


	3. It's Thunder and It's Lightning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This can only go on for so long, and I'm running low on patience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> special thanks to tumblr user [gonnagetnaked](http://gonnagetnaked.tumblr.com)

We haven’t done shit since that day. No one’s dead, no one’s dying. No more of those wanderers, either, although I’m really fucking thankful for that. She was terrifying. I wonder what her name was. 

I’ve started thinking of her and any potential spirits like her as Losts. You know, because they’re lost.

Whatever. Naming them prevents me from accidentally thinking of them as inhuman, and if they deserve anything with that fucking zombie-like appearance, it’s empathy. So, she was a Lost, and there might be more out there. We just haven’t found them yet.

Given that Eren and I pass every crawling hour in utter helplessness, I’m starting to feel a little like I’m lost in reality. Or whatever reality my perception boils up to make sure I’m always numb and antsy. Keeping track of the date both keeps me sane and drives me crazy. I just do it out of some weird human compulsion. Pretending that time matters to me prevents me from falling into the dark. The red LED sign outside the bank a few blocks from the clinic tells me every day that time is passing.

It also reminds me every day that I’m running out of it.

It’s March 2nd when I come to stand on the curb next to an ugly flowery suitcase. I don’t have to lean down to it to know that it smells like mothballs, and I don’t need to look at it to know that the second cabbage-looking rose from the bottom on the right side has a chewed-out hole in the center that was patched over years and years ago. Turns out suitcases don’t make great lizard houses, but try telling that to a seven-year-old boy with Godzilla dreams.

My mother is the taller, broader of the two women standing on the sidewalk in front of a little blue house. Her words come in fast and wavering German, tears streaking her flushed cheeks, and she talks over her sister easily.

 _“This land has taken everything from me, Elke,”_ she says, wringing her hands in front of her. She’s wearing the same black dress she wore after my dad died. _“First my husband, and now it’s taken my only child and given me nothing—”_

 _“Come to Kansas,”_ my aunt soothes. My mother won’t. _“Come stay with us for a while.”_

 _“I won’t.”_ Told you. _“You should come back to Germany with me.”_ She pauses, then sobs a little and takes her sister’s hands. _“Come home, Elke.”_

My aunt shakes her head sadly, bringing my mother’s knuckles gently to her lips. _“I can’t, Anja. The children, and Grant…”_

My mother nods, taking a step back, and I know the conversation is over. The taxi driver hauls my mother’s suitcases into the trunk and opens the door for her, and my mother and aunt hug tightly for a minute or two before my mother slides into the car and closes the door.

I wonder if she remembered to lock the door.

My aunt lingers for a while, staring at the house until it starts to rain. She opens an umbrella and turns toward town, and I’m left staring at the empty eyes of my childhood home.

Eren doesn’t talk to me. He just hangs to the side, sitting on the big metal postbox. 

I walk up the cracked sidewalk, tripping over the same lipped concrete I always have, and when I step up the wooden stairs they don’t creak under my weight.

She left the door unlocked.

I reach in without looking and turn the little lock on the handle, then tug the door closed again.

The painted wood against my temple is damp from the humidity. The metal of the handle slides in my sweaty palm. Leaning heavily against the door does nothing to calm my shaking shoulders.

When I move back to Eren, I don’t pull my hood up, and the pattering rain probably does a good job of hiding the wet streaks down my face, although I imagine it does nothing for the flush on my cheeks and under my eyes, nor for the way I’m sniffling.

He doesn’t say anything, though. He just hops off the postbox and slaps me on the shoulder, and we’re on our way.

\--

Two days later, Bert and Marco break up. 

It’s not dramatic, nor violent. It just… kind of _is_. 

Neither of them look surprised. Bert’s standing by the door, holding the giant hoodie, and Marco’s looking at the floor again. Bert reaches out and runs his knuckles down Marco’s flushed cheek, then pulls him gently by the chin until he can lean down and kiss his forehead, eyes squeezed shut. Marco reaches up and grasps Bert’s wrist, but when he pulls away and leaves, Marco makes no move to stop him.

With that, I guess they’re done. 

Marco comes over to the window and leans against it again, watching the rain patter on the street. There’s a vague, distant rumble of thunder.

I reach down and scrub at the window over his forehead. There was a spot on the glass.

Christa comes over later, a smile across her tired face, and the one Marco gives her is painfully fake. Everyone knows it. Well, I know it, and Christa knows it, and I’m sure Eren does too even if he’s reclined nonchalantly on the ceiling, fingers laced behind his head. 

I cross my legs under myself on his counter, watching Christa pull down two wine glasses and dump some shitty red box wine into them, far beyond the normal filling range. Marco’s already got his stupid moose pants on, pushing his glasses up his nose while he flicks through Netflix. Christa goes and hands him a glass, stealing some of the blanket laid over his lap, and she doesn’t ask questions when he puts on that god-awful _Friday the 13th_ remake from a few years ago.

“Why did you see her?” Eren asks from the ceiling after a while, poking at some spider webs. I sigh and run my hands down my face, staring at the way her hair sticks up out of the lazy bun she’s thrown it in. She’s leaning on Marco’s shoulder, and they’re both laughing at how fucking terrible this movie is.

“Social anxiety,” I mumble eventually. I’m not sure I’ve ever really told anyone that. Not like it matters now.

“What, so people scare you?”

I look up at him, pursing my lips. “Yeah, I guess.”

He falls to the ground and lands like a cat, then meanders over to me. “Why?”

“I dunno.” I pick at the frayed edge of my hoodie, pulling at a loose thread here or there. “No real reason.”

“Did it help?” I blink, raising my eyebrows in question. “The therapy. Did it make you better?”

I can’t help but snort at that. “You fucking tell me, man.”

He shrugs, his hands shoved into his pockets. “You don’t look at people much, I guess, but you’re just as normal as anyone else.”

“I was working on that. The first part.”

Eren doesn’t speak for a moment. The sound of teenagers screaming fills the air, along with Marco’s stupid booming laugh and the little bells of Christa’s giggles.

“Look at me.”

I furrow my brow and pull my sleeves over my hands, trying to withdraw as much as I can. I’m already bristling. He doesn’t give me a chance to tell him to fuck off, though, because he reaches out and bumps my chin up so I have no choice but to let him catch my gaze.

 _So_ fucking green. Fuck my life. Fuck. I grit my teeth, trapped there, and just when my heart rate’s up too high and my vision’s starting to tunnel, he blinks, and I am freed.

I exhale slowly, staring at his stupid key, and he hums.

“Just as normal as anyone else.”

I chance a look up at him through my eyelashes. He gives me a lopsided grin and a punch in the shoulder. 

\--

A week later I tell him about my homework, and he’s a little too on-board with that idea. He must be really fucking bored.

My heart isn’t beating so hard when he stares at me, sitting cross-legged on top of the Starbucks, not even when he squints at me like he’s searching for something.

“So you never had sex.”

“Is this gay chicken? Get fucked, Eren. Change the subject.”

“So you never had sex and you’re sensitive about it.”

“I will break your face in _again.”_

“Did you ever kiss anyone?”

“Of course, you piece of shit.” I’ve always been a shitty liar.

“No you haven’t.”

“I have too. You’re projecting. Death doesn’t get any action, so he picks on people in retaliation.”

He’s narrowing his eyes at me. “I’ve kissed before.” It’s the truth, and also more than I can say.

I’m not really sure why I do it. Curiosity, maybe, or jealousy… something dumb like that. But it happens. 

I lean forward too far and my eyes flutter shut, and his lips are warm and kinda rough against mine. It’s not a bad feeling. I can see why people do it. I wish I’d done it before I died.

Shit, I wish I’d done a lot of things before I died. I would have gotten a tattoo, but I didn’t want people to have an excuse to come talk to me. Same with piercings, although I’ve always thought I would look cool with a septum piercing. I wish I’d kissed someone, had sex with someone, let myself get close to someone. 

I’m starting to realize just how much this stupid condition held me back, and I’m very fucking pissed off about it. 

Leaning back, I peer at Eren again, and he’s got the stupidest fucking grin on his face.

“You really didn’t ever kiss anyone, jeez.”

Swear to god, when I yank at his hair and tackle him, I meant to start throwing punches, but he flips us over and slams me against the wet roof and shoves his tongue into my mouth in a manner approaching graceless, and it occurs to me that kissing Eren feels very much like beating the piss out of Eren. So I knee him in the ribs, and he pulls my hair, and I guess we're fucking making out or something.

It's not bad.

Something to scratch off the bucket list, I suppose.

\--

I wish I could say that Marco’s taking the breakup well, but the number of days he’s forgotten to run a comb through his hair or shave is becoming alarming. 

He apparently forgets to eat and sleep, too. He’s just become a working machine, throwing himself into his dissertation with a fervor approaching mania. Whatever distracts him from it, I guess, but he’s losing weight and Christa is definitely noticing. She’s taken to barging into his office with pizza and distracting him so that he eats a lot more than he realizes. (I know the technique. My mother did the same thing to me after I moved back here.) At the end of the day, she also conveniently “forgets” the remnants in the little fridge he has tucked under his desk.

I guess he’s not starving to death any time soon. The mixed feelings I have about that thought are somewhat alarming.

Regardless, it’s been a while since I’ve seen that ginormous Disney prince smile. Sometimes he looks so sad I can’t even bear to stalk him. Those days are rare, fortunately, but I still can’t help but feel like he’s drifting a little.

We’re not going to talk about how badly I don’t want to see that.

Whenever he has coffee lunches with some of the other clinicians, all of them piled into the corner of Starbucks with their laptops and buckets of coffee and ‘ugh what’s the wifi password?,’ he seems like he’s doing pretty okay, even if he’s not quite all there at times. It’s barely been a month, though. I can’t say I blame him.

Time heals all wounds. Or something.

The way he stares at the tiles while he’s waiting in line, though. I can’t get that look out of my mind.

Mostly because he looks a little lost. And that word has a whole new meaning to me.

\--

It’s April 6th when Eren blinks, eyes searching the air around me, then focuses on me again and grabs my sleeve. “Levi’s calling.”

I don’t even scream anymore. I just kind of sigh and hope for the best at this point.

When we land, though, I have to grab hold quickly because this motherfucker had _missed,_ and I very nearly plummeted to my fucking death. So I’m clinging to this branch like a goddamn sloth, and before I find my voice to start hollering, his hand shoots down and covers my mouth while the other hauls me up to safety.

I bite his finger, but he just pins me with a look and points to the desk a ways below us.

“You’ve been busy,” Levi says quietly, arms crossed over his stomach. The man standing next to his desk, a tall, broad blonde, adjusts his tie and chuckles quietly.

“Your turn will come.”

That’s all the response he gets. I squint down at them, still wrapped around the branch, but at least I’m fucking right way up this time.

Levi snorts and looks straight up at us. Cover blown. “Get down here.”

Eren stiffens and grabs my jacket, and luckily he lands me on my damn feet this time. I stand awkwardly in front of the desk. It seems like a thousand years ago I was here, scared and alone, grappling with the mental picture of my own corpse. I think three and a half months of not sleeping has reconciled me with the image.

Now I’m here again and just plain old nervous.

“Eren, Jean,” the guy says. First person I’ve seen so far who’s been taller than me, and my god he must’ve gotten all the height allotment in this whole place because this man is _huge._ The fuck.

“Erwin,” Eren mumbles, hands at his sides. His spine is ramrod straight, though. He’s not great at faking comfort. “Everything okay?”

“Of course,” the man, Erwin, replies smoothly, sliding his hands into his pockets. He’s wearing easily the fanciest damn suit I have ever seen. Levi leans back in his chair, uncrossing and recrossing his ankles, feet kicked up casually on his stupid fucking tilted desk. I’m so annoyed that nothing has fallen off yet, it’s unnatural.

Unnatural. Says the dead guy.

“Jean, there’s a term to your, ah, contract that hasn’t been quite explained to you yet.”

I raise my eyebrows and look up at him, and when I meet his eyes I feel like a tiny caterpillar.

I hold it. I’ve been practicing. Even if it makes my stomach churn.

Blue. Not like Armin’s, but like a fucking… like steel, like ice. I’m so uncomfortable.

But I’m not afraid.

Shit, I was spacing out.

“—don’t know that we need to, sir, I’m sorry—”

Oh. Just Eren. But Eren _apologizing_ , which is pretty new to me.

Erwin smiles, and it does not reach his eyes. “The architect’s working on that, Eren. Don’t worry.” He turns to me again. “Jean, sometimes we need the ankou to be more firmly on the ground. You’ll be given your body back. Just keep your eyes out, we’ll let you know more as we find out information ourselves.”

“Wait, what?” I must have missed something, because excuse me _what._

“Your body. It’s ready. Finish up any last-minute—” his eyes flash in a way that fucking _screams_ ‘Marco Bodt.’ “—Affairs, and then you’ll be placed amongst the living.”

“Uh,” I start. “Isn’t my body a little… unusable?”

Erwin shrugs. “We have our ways.”

Right. Reality is what you make of it.

“What about the people who knew me? I only died a while ago.”

The smile that graces his thin lips is bone-chilling, but not nearly as much as the words that pour forth from them.

“People in your situation tend to be forgotten more quickly, in case of circumstances like this. I imagine you’ll be fine walking amongst them now.”

Have you ever heard the sound a jet plane makes when the engines lose power? That sort of slowly whirring hum that rumbles numbness into every part of you, and the weird ringing that fills your ears right before they die out and your plane starts taking a nosedive?

Yeah, that’s all I hear.

I can’t feel anything but the fiery sting of tears and the tugging deep in my skull that lets me know that I need to sit down. Quickly.

So I do.

It hurts my ass a little. I focus on that. Focus, focus, be here. Fight it fight it.

Eren’s saying something but it’s lost in the hum. I stare at my hands.

I’m going to have a panic attack.

Hold it, hold it, not now. Not here. Later. Later, later, later. Not here, not in front of these people, not in front of this icy fucking monolith that just told me that everyone I ever knew in my shit little town has forgotten I even existed less than one hundred days after my death. Three months and change. A blink of an eye to the eternal.

It’s rising.

_“Jean.”_

I jolt, curling my hands into tight fists, and I stare up at Eren. We’re somewhere else again.

It’s the wheat field I used to hide in when I was little, during that year I spent in Kansas away from the pollen.

I close my eyes and when I inhale deeply, the bready smell fills my nose and I am assaulted with the memories of that time. The summer that had seemed so endless, the fall that buzzed dry and windy around me while I went to school with a bunch of people I’d never met and would never see again after I came back to Trost.

Hours and days I spent in this wheat field, in a flattened hollow I’d found after ages of climbing through the amber waves. Alone in my imagination and completely content to be so. I guess it’s kind of my happy place.

The sky is that bright, endless blue above us, the air roasting and filled with the whispers of the stalks brushing together in the breeze. I fall onto my back and search for the rabbit cloud. It was my favorite, because it was the hardest to find. Only twice, I think. Only twice I caught that fluffy white cottontail bounding across the sky.

“I can’t do this,” I tell Eren for the thousandth time. He stares down at me, bracketed by clouds so white they’re blinding. The blue Kansas sky is the purest I’ve ever seen. I’ve never seen one like it. Especially not in rainy Trost in rainy Oregon. I think the color swallows my eyes when I stare at it too long, but I like getting lost in space. 

“You—”

“Don’t tell me I’ll get used to it. You know that’s a lie.”

He remains silent. His eyes turn to the sky as well, his gaze searching for the end of the void.

A long time and a hundred clouds pass before he speaks again. The sun never moves.

“I know you don’t want to, but you can do this, Jean.”

“I don’t have a choice, do I.”

“From the sound of it, no.”

“He’s not dead yet.”

“I’m aware.”

“No one’s fucking dead yet.”

“I know.”

“So why do I have to pretend like I belong there? Why do I have to go back?”

“Come on, Jean. Did you like it that much? Being a ghost?”

I suck on my lip while I ponder that. It was nice, I guess. At first. I have to admit that I’ve been getting frustrated. I’d thought that was the boredom talking, but I guess maybe it was the whole ‘starving for what I’d feared for half my life’ thing, now that I think about it.

He doesn’t need an answer. 

“How long can I put it off?”

Eren shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck. “I really am sorry, Jean. For all of this.”

I sigh and close my eyes, taking in the warm summer sun for a while longer. Just a little longer. The dry smell calms me down, against all odds. “Why are you apologizing? It’s not like you stabbed me on New Year’s Eve.” He’s silent for a tick too long. My eyes flash open, my heart skipping. “You didn’t, did you?”

“No, no,” he says quickly, sitting next to me. Crushed wheat crunches under his weight. “I swear, no. I just feel bad having to watch it.”

I shrug, tossing an arm over my face. “I’m not going back today.” 

“I didn’t think you would.”

We bake in the Kansas sun for a long time, and he makes no move to shove me along. He just sprawls out next to me. I think he actually manages to fall asleep after a while, but I just stare up at the clouds.

I catch cottontail twice more.

\--

“I wanna do something before I come back,” I say the next day, scratching the back of my neck. Eren raises his eyebrows at me, winding casually through the somewhat busy plaza we’re standing in. 

“What’s that?”

“I want to go see Christa. Say thank you.”

He nods, tapping a finger against his chin. “Do you think she’d want flowers?”

I raise an eyebrow, looking around the plaza. We’re not exactly swimming in flowers, despite the fact that it’s spring now or something. He just grins and grabs my wrist again. Ugh. 

\--

“Okay, so the gardener is a real asshole, but she’s just a stand-in.”

“What happened to the other one?”

“She’s busy.”

I shrug and follow Eren, meandering through a springy forest of thin, white-barked trees. Sunlight filters through the leaves and falls soft and green to the grass beneath me. Eren keeps stopping and searching around, looking like he’s trying really hard not to get lost. I push my sleeves up to my elbows. It’s warm here.

“Hey, Eren.”

“Mhm?”

“So… none of them will remember me.” He stops then, tense, and turns to face me. I step out of a blinding ray of sunlight, hands stuffed in my pockets. “Not Christa, not my coworkers, not the guy at Starbucks.”

He stares at me for a long while, then drops his gaze. “No.”

I sigh and chew on my thumbnail. 

“I’m sorry, Jean.”

“Stop, dude,” I mumble, rubbing at my eye. “Does this happen every year?”

“No. This is the first time in a few years someone’s been put back.”

I look back up at him. God, the expression on his face… I reach out and punch him lightly in the shoulder. “You look like you’re gonna cry.” The smile I give him is weak and shaky. “Isn’t that my job?”

He just bites his lip, eyes narrowed a little, and when he grabs my hand and drags me through the forest, I just let him.

We come to a clearing after a while, the sky calm and clear above us, and I swear to god the clearing is piled thick with a burst of every fucking flower in existence. It’s so goddamn colorful. Almost hard to look at. I think my eyes are just used to varying shades of grey, and the ground is firing rainbows at me like a torrent out of a fire hose. Jesus.

“Don’t look so disgruntled,” comes a boisterous taunt from a tree across the way. Eren smiles and bounds across to the tree, jumping up into the clouds of pink flowers to join whoever’s up there. I just wind through the overcrowded garden. Seriously, nearly every part of this place is a neon spray of flowers of every shape and size and variety. The ground barely has any space that’s just grass. Even the trees are flowering, bright explosions of every kind; white poofs and pink fucking cherry blossoms and dripping purple cascades.

I stop next to a thick-stemmed sunflower, its face turned to the morningish sun peeking over the trees, and run my fingers along its broad, furry leaves. 

“Jean,” Eren calls, hanging upside down out of the tree and gesturing for me to come over. I raise my eyebrows.

It turns out, there’s a path. You just have to be kind of insane to make sense of it. I hop unsteadily between round, grassy patches until I make it over to the tree. Eren’s up there play-wrestling with some ponytailed, lanky person, who successfully knocks his ass out of the tree and cackles at him.

“ _Ow,_ dude,” he manages, sitting up and rubbing his head. The person who so thoroughly bested him hops out of the tree, dangerously close to landing on him, then turns to investigate me. She’s tall, tan, freckled, and _way_ too close to me. “Jean, this is—”

“I’m Ymir,” she says over him, pulling my hand out of my pocket and shaking it forcefully. “Stand-in gardener.”

“Looks good,” I mutter, retrieving my hand and taking a step back.

“You should see the other side,” Ymir boasts, wiggling her eyebrows. I look around, trying to make sense of that, but she just ruffles my hair in a way that kind of bowls me into a tree. Jesus. I feel like if she were ever actually angry, it’d likely be game over. 

She moves into the garden, humming to herself. I scoot back over to Eren. He accepts my hand and stands up, then starts emptying soil out of his pockets. “What’s the deal here?” He raises his eyebrows and looks between me and Ymir, then shrugs and grins. 

“You needed flowers.”

Ymir pops back into the shade with a fucking army of flowers. Roses and daisies and daffodils, carnations and fucking _tree branches_ , a million warm colors filling her strong arms. Her bright grin hangs above them like she’s never been prouder, cheeks faintly tinged pink.

If she’s this enthused, I wonder what the regular gardener is like.

“Uh,” I start, scratching my head. “Isn’t that kind of a lot?”

Ymir looks down at the spread, considering it, then clicks her tongue. “To you, maybe.” The flowers sort of… pop then, though, like little fireworks, and the petals float down to the grass in a rain of colorful droplets. It almost seems wasteful. She’s left with half a dozen yellow tulips, which she holds out to me in a simple clay vase. Where the fuck did she get a vase?

I guess it doesn’t matter. A fucking vase bush, probably.

I take the thing, nodding my thanks. Ymir looks a lot like she wants to say something. Instead, she just gives me this half-smile as she slides her hands into her pockets, looking between me and Eren. “How’s it going down there?”

Eren shrugs. “Not much yet, but Erwin floated Jean’s Replacement.” He sighs, scratching at his cheek. “He knows what he’s doing. I just wish we did too.”

Ymir rubs the back of her neck and looks up into the leaves. “You’ll know in time. We always do.”

I glance between them, and I really don’t like the look on either of their faces. I know better than to ask, though. I’m just gonna get fucking riddles.

“We should get back, yeah?” Eren nods vaguely in response. I’m not sure that he’s listening. I would turn to leave, but I’m not the one who knows where we’re going.

“Oh, Ymir,” Eren says, looking back up at her. She raises her eyebrows. “Have you seen Annie around?”

Ymir blinks at him. “Mm, nope. Not since the new year.” She give him this smarmy grin and reaches out, and before he can really do anything about it she pulls him into a vicious noogie. I take a good step back, out of her reach. Not trying to be on the receiving end of one of those myself. It’s pretty hilarious when it’s happening to Eren, though. “They’re both fine, you big nerd. You know they can take care of themselves.”

“Jeez, come on, Ymir—I can’t breathe—”

“You don’t need to!”

“ _God,_ Ymir!”

“You can just call me Ymir, thanks,” she brays, laughing obnoxiously as she tosses him toward me. Eren grumbles and stands up straight, brushing his knees off. “Jean.” I turn back to her. She stares at the tulips for a second, then gives me kind of a wobbly smile. “I hope she likes them.”

“Oh,” I say, clutching the vase. “They’re for my therapist, not—”

Ymir huffs. “I know she’s not your girlfriend, you ass. Now get off my lawn, I got shit to do.” She stalks away before I can respond to that, hopping down a hole I hadn’t noticed. I kind of wonder if it leads to the other side she’d mentioned. 

“I told you she’s a dick,” Eren mumbles, brushing petals out of his hair. “Oh, before I forget.” He turns back to the field and moves along the edge until he hits a bush of fat pink flowers with bursts of yellow curling up from the middles. He pulls one off, apparently impervious to the damn thorns, and comes back over to me. 

“The fuck are you doing?” 

He blinks at me when I ask, turning the sharp stem between his fingers, then dumps the flower into the vase and stomps past me.

I catch his grumbled “Happy birthday” as he rolls by, set along a path I can’t quite see, and it takes me a second to stop staring at the wide yellow eye of the pink flower resting innocuously amongst the tulips and follow him.

I wish I could say I’d forgotten what day it is.

Guess I would have been 24.

\--

Eren finds an excuse to be away while I do this. I appreciate it. I imagine it’s gonna look something like me talking to a wall in his eyes.

Christa’s in her office, hammering away at her keyboard and sifting through binders of colorful treatment questionnaires. I’m familiar with the pages. I’d filled out my fair share of them.

I set the vase on the desk next to her computer. She doesn’t seem to notice. Not that I’d expected her to. I kind of doubt that she can even see them, but right now it’s the best I can do for her. 

The couch I collapse onto just barely fits in the office, sandwiched tight between the walls and wedged under the lip of the windowsill. I wonder how she even got it in here. I’ve come to suspect that she sleeps here on busy nights. She never really seemed like it, but with as much time as I’ve spent in this building recently I can’t help but notice that she keeps a change of clothes and a stash of snacks in her desk drawer, and a toothbrush in a coffee cup behind her monitor.

Marco’s the same way.

“Hey, Christa,” I mumble, playing with my fingers in my lap. “Sorry I haven’t really seen you for a while. I know you understand why, but still.”

Her fingers click away on the keys. I stare at the bookcase behind her, stuffed with textbooks and reference books, colorful post-its sticking up from the pages all over the place. There’s a shelf for her treatment binders too, right about where eye level would be for her.

Mine isn’t there. No binder labeled ‘1046 JK’ in neat blue letters. Her handwriting is actually pretty terrible, much worse than the evenly-spaced initials on the spines’ labels. 

It’s the way the T’s are crossed on the two that have them that gives her away. I’ve only seen that dumb curly cross one other place, and I spent enough time staring at those letters that I’d probably recognize it anywhere. 

Marco writes her labels. I have to snort at that.

I sigh and run a hand through my hair, kicking my feet up onto the faded tweed. It’s comfortable. Nothing at all like the musty-smelling armchair in the therapy room a few doors down. I guess being a little uncomfortable is conducive to that whole process, or something. 

Given the last few months, I think I’ve earned this bit of comfort.

“I did my homework,” I say after a while. “Sorry it took so long.”

Her fingers pause on the keys, a little too long to be a normal rest for thought. Like she’s contemplating something. She’s not acting like someone who’s just seen a ghost or heard voices, though, so I know she’s still unaware of me. For the first time.

I guess maybe I didn’t live in the background as much as I thought. I bury my face in my hands and slink down against the arm of the couch. 

“Sorry, it’s kinda hard. I’m used to you listening to me.” I chuckle weakly, dropping my hands to my lap again, and stare at the painting over the foot of the couch. It’s a warm autumn scene, comfortable and peaceful, but the reds are so bright I can’t help but think of fire. 

Christa leans back in her chair then. As I glance over at her, she sighs and laces her fingers over her thin stomach. She’s not looking at the screen, though, instead just staring at her desk. I wonder if she slept here again last night. Or at all. 

When she crosses her legs, dangling her flat off her toes, I kind of get the impossible impression that she’s waiting for me to tell her everything.

“Yeah, I, uh. I made a friend. I guess.” I cross my legs under myself, staring up at the lumpy ceiling. “His name’s Eren. He’s a dick sometimes, but I guess he’s tolerable. He helped me with the eye contact exposure. Sorry I did it when you weren’t there. I guess I was just feeling particularly motivated.” 

She starts humming quietly. I don’t really recognize the song. It’s pretty, though.

“As for the homework…” Erwin’s face crosses my mind, a brief flash, just as icy in memory as in person. “I did it. Made eye contact with a stranger and held it. I guess I made conversation, too. He was full of bad news, though, so I don’t know that it counted.”

She’s playing with her fingers, lips pursed in thought. I know what she’d say, though. ‘Of course it counted, Jean. I knew you could do it. Are you happy?’

I don’t think I’m quite starved enough for contact to imagine her end of the conversation, but I suppose I know how the rest of it would go. Positive, always positive. Christa’s so bright. I don’t know how she manages it, but I’m really fucking glad my file landed on her desk. I’m glad I came here.

“I guess I just wanted to thank you,” I mumble, watching her stuff her hair up into a messy bun. She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear and stretches, hands high above her head, a little smile on her lips. “I think I’m ready to stop coming here.”

The door bursts open suddenly, and we both startle. Loud noises are usually followed by Eren, at least in my experience. This one, though, is accompanied by a seriously ruffled, stubbly, glasses-wearing Marco, who barely finishes entering the room before he’s talking. “Hey boo, can I borrow your pocket DSM? I have a consensus with Mike in like thirty seconds and I left mine in the fridge.”

“Oh, uh,” she says, clearly caught off-guard. She digs under a stack of papers and pulls out a thin grey book, tossing it to him. I would be surprised that she doesn’t question why he left a diagnostic manual in the fridge, but considering what I’ve learned about Marco I’m not even really that shocked. He probably brought his jug of milk to work instead of the book. “Your hair’s a hot mess, do you have a comb?”

“I’ve got fingers,” he mumbles, stuffing the book in the back pocket of his baggy-ass jeans. He kinda looks like shit. Still. He’s already halfway out the door before he pauses and pokes his head back in, peering more closely at Christa. “What’s up?”

“Oh,” she mumbles, spinning her chair to face him. “I dunno. I guess it’s just…” she pauses, and Marco leans against the doorframe, a smile creeping over his fuzzy, tired face. “It’s a really good day today, you know?”

He chuckles, glancing past me and out the window. It’s only partially cloudy for once. “Yeah, I think so,” he murmurs, looking back at Christa. “I like your flowers, by the way.”

She turns back toward the desk, wide eyes searching, and I’m not really sure what emotion to feel when her gaze lands on the bright tulips brushing the edge of her monitor. I think ‘queasy’ might be a good one. “Thanks,” she mumbles, reaching out to run the tips of her pale fingers over the soft yellow petals.

“Wanna go to Starbucks once I’m done arguing with Gunther about panic?”

She laughs, familiar little bells, then turns back to him. “Absolutely. Come grab me when you’re done. Pull no punches.” He makes an assenting sound, then a vaguely panicked one as he seems to remember that time exists, and as he bolts down the hallway Christa shouts, “Please run your fingers through your hair!”

Shaking her head, she turns back to her computer, taking a second to lean her chin in her palm and stare at the unassuming little vase. 

It’s with renewed vigor that she returns to her paper, and I’m really glad that she can’t see me and that Eren’s still somewhere else, because the looks on her face and Marco’s both make me simultaneously proud of myself and profoundly depressed.

I wonder if she always smiled like this when I had a good day. I wonder if she always shared them with me like this.

I’m so fucking done with this.

\--

I will not tell you how long I fucking sobbed into Christa’s couch, but they went to Starbucks and back by the time I was fucking done, and my head was _killing._

The weird feeling of being out of place had obviously followed me this whole damn time, given that I’m walking as a ghost amongst people that I’ve known most of my life, and it is fucking not the same out-of-place feeling I’d always felt. Being a wallflower is an entirely different animal. I know that now.

I also know that I never expected to miss all this shit so badly once it was out of my reach.

I’m extremely fucking volatile. A week goes by of monstrous mood swings, my temper lying on a hair trigger, and Eren and I fight more in that week than we ever have. I tell him so as we split a cigarette on top of Starbucks, both of us squeezing our heavily-bleeding noses, and he seems shocked by the fact that he agrees.

Christa, Erd, and Gunther are all playfully fighting over the two available outlets near their pow-wow of squishy couches when Marco lets out this howling laugh, booming and bright and exactly like it should be, his stupid huge phone clutched tightly to his nice button-down.

“Oh god, I’m sorry,” he gasps, honestly wiping tears out of his eyes. He’s fresh-shaved, combed, wearing his contacts… generally looking better. “I’m sorry, ugh, my friend Connie just sent me a really funny joke.”

“What is it?” Erd asks as he stealthily steals Gunther’s outlet while he’s distracted, tossing the plug to his laptop under the couch. “You can’t just cackle like that and not share.”

“I hope it’s actually funny,” Marco says, scooting forward in his seat and fiddling with his phone. I sit on the back of his chair, trying to see the text over his shoulder. “And not just me being loopy or something.”

“Come on, come on,” Gunther pesters around a mouthful of coffee.

“Okay, okay,” he starts, looking stupidly excited. What a fucking nerd. “Why did the ghost go to the bar?”

Oh my god. I squint at him, and he bites his lip to keep from blurting out the answer while his friends ponder and make faces. It gets the better of him, though, and the punch line comes out in a squeaky rush.

_“For the boos!”_

“Oh my god, Marco!” I’m not the only one that hollers it. Christa does too, her hands clapping over her face, and Erd and Gunther both look truly affronted. Marco’s about peeing himself, though, his hand pressed tight over his mouth.

He looks around, gleefully soaking in their general despair, and when he doesn’t look back at me I’m not exactly surprised. It’s the last straw, though.

It lights a roaring fire under a thought that’s been festering under my brain for the last month or so. 

The world spins like I’m gonna go into a panic. But the fear isn’t there.

I’m just _really_ fucking pissed off.

I fucking trash the Starbucks bathroom.

I want him to see me. I want all of them to see me, to look into my eyes and fucking notice me.

Even if I’m not alive anymore, I want them to know.

There is nothing in my eyes that makes me less human.

\--

Eren doesn’t know what prompted this determination, but he doesn’t need to. He’ll probably just get pissed. But you know what, fuck it. I’m gonna be selfish. I want this. And I will fucking use the time I have left to try and make up for all the time I wasted worrying.

I notice Marco always orders the same thing. Venti latte. He likes the sparse espresso with a foot of steamed milk piled onto it, I guess. I wonder if he drank a lot of milk when he was young. He’s tall, his chest broad, his forearms thick and, I imagine, strong.

On days when it’s really busy in the morning, he orders a regular coffee after he’s spent his time in line looking at the people trailing behind him, his face a painting of sheepish guilt, his lip caught between his teeth. He must feel bad ordering a drink that requires so many little steps on days when the baristas don’t even make the effort to wear their plastic smiles. The gallon of milk and ton of sugar he always dumps into it eases the bitterness, but on those days he skips lunch and looks a little perturbed. I guess coffee upsets his stomach.

It is April 30th when he’s wearing those dumb brown corduroy pants, the ones that are a little too tight around his thighs and whose pockets are too shallow for his laughably huge phone. The way it pokes up out of his back pocket makes it easy for me to take it and slide it into my own, and like always he is blissfully unaware of my presence haunting his side. 

It is May 1st when his phone is heavy in my pocket and I stare at Levi’s ear as I quietly ask him to return me to my forgotten body.


	4. Lazarus Wept

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Resurrection is horrible. The down time is worse. The only constant in the time I have left seems to be getting more and more gut-wrenching, more dangerous, and I have no idea what to do about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> special thanks to tumblr user [gonnagetnaked](http://gonnagetnaked.tumblr.com)

Oh my god oh my god oh my god—

“Ooh, it’s been a few years since I did this last,” say the thick glasses hovering excitedly in my face. “Let me know if anything hurts, that’ll be interesting—I mean, I think I remember how to stop it, unless I got that mixed up with the other thing. I imagine you’ll still be able to do stuff without that arm, or that leg, but I wonder if the ear might be a little much—”

_Oh my god—_

“Hey, idiot,” Levi interrupts, yanking on the bushy ponytail practically quivering with excitement. “He needs to blend in. Isn’t that the idea?” 

“I mean, I guess the lack of limbs _could_ be a confound, but—”

“No experiments, Hanji,” comes Erwin’s deep, albeit amused, voice. 

“Why don’t we ask him? He has a right to an opinion, right? Jean, how would you feel about—”

“No experiments, please,” I squeak, very intimidated by the way this person’s bony fingers are digging into my shoulders. They’re pressing me tight against this weird metal chair, exhibiting a profound lack of personal space. 

“I haven’t even given you full informed consent! If I remember rightly, you’ll get used to the facial numbness—”

“Oh my god—”

_“Hanji.”_

“Ugh, fine,” they mumble, rolling their eyes dramatically. I swallow and try to bear down the nervousness. They pull away finally, grabbing a clipboard, and I take a deep breath in their absence. Jesus. 

Hanji flips through the papers, pacing through this weird dentist’s office of a room. Erwin and Levi are leaned against the wall, watching idly, and Eren’s perched nervously on top of a cabinet. He barely fits up there, back hunched to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. I close my eyes and take a second to just breathe.

It’s been a chaotic sort of day.

Ever since the request slipped from my lips, it’s just been a long series of jumping between planes, a laundry list of rules and regulations, and the near-constant max-volume shrieks of Hanji’s enthusiasm. For someone who just met me today, they’re incredibly friendly.

“Wake up, the fun part comes next!” The sharp rap of the clipboard knocking on my skull jolts me out of my brief calm. I rub my head, shooting them a dirty look. They just grin at me and twirl a pen between their fingers. “You’ll look the same as you did, sound the same, all that. You’re still dead, though, and that comes with certain benefits. Antigravity, no real need to eat or sleep, psychic manipulation, so on. Oh, no more going through walls, though.”

“Don’t let anyone see you doing that shit,” Levi interrupts, crossing his arms over his chest. “Any funny business will raise questions that we don’t really feel like sparing the resources to take care of.”

I swallow again, glancing between him and Erwin, and Hanji hums thoughtfully. They move behind me, whistling badly, before the sound of a metal cabinet opening catches my attention. I turn in the chair and peek over the headrest, and I can’t decide if I’m horrified or unsurprised to see a wall of those silver doors you only see in morgues. I also can’t remember if they were there before.

Regardless, Hanji yanks one open, and the chilled air fogs out around a body bag lying like a frozen turkey on the pull-out rack.

Oh.

I turn back around and examine my feet.

“Hey, Jean,” Eren says quietly. I glance up at him, overly conscious of the way he’s rubbing his palms against his pants. Levi’s watching him out of the corner of his eye. “You’ll still be the only one who can see me, so try not to talk to me in public.”

“Don’t want to talk to you anywhere,” I grumble, fiddling with the hem of my hoodie. It’s fucking freezing in here, now that I think about it. Explains why Hanji’s fingers are so goddamn cold.

“Fuck off,” he replies, moving to straighten up and cracking his skull. I let myself laugh at him.

I don’t know why I had assumed Eren would be coming with me, but I guess it makes more sense that he isn’t. 

I yelp when the back of my chair flies backward, trying not to roll ass over elbows, and Hanji’s directly in my fucking face again. “By the way,” they say, tugging on my hair and adjusting my chin perhaps a little more forcefully than they realize. “You shouldn’t decompose—” oh _grand_ “—but the whole dying thing still applies.”

“What dying thing?” I manage around the lockjaw they’re holding my face in. “That’s a little vague around here.”

They blink, then give a lop-sided grin. “If you lose your body, we don’t have another one.” A pause. I squint at them. “And if you die outside of your body, you die for good.”

My eyes widen. 

“Wait, _what—”_

“So try not to do that. Ready? Great!”

I make a wheezing, protesting sound, but they ignore it entirely and cover my eyes, and everything after that is darkness.

\--

What comes next is a really strange feeling. I don’t really think there are words to explain it. I’d have to make some up. 

I guess it’s more a series of emotions and flashes of color and light, and that fucking buzzing sound that wriggles deep in between your ears and bangs around like an angry moth.

Confused. Cold. Nauseous. I am small again, and I am older than I’ve ever been, and I’m nowhere and everywhere at once. I am made of stars, but I’m losing them through the hole in my ribs, the universe bleeding out of my perforated lung like paint and I see none of it.

Going out felt like blinking.

Going back in feels like the kind of nightmare Lovecraft would have after a night of LSD and cocaine bingeing.

When I resemble a concise being again, the first thing I’m aware of is— 

_Oh holy fuck what the shit **oh god**_

“Doctor!” Distant, hollow voices. Pounding migraine. Don’t wanna open my eyes. “Jim, he’s awake!”

The drumming rises in pitch until it’s a deafening screeching disaster. My dry mouth cracks open with a pained wheeze. Agony fills my throat and crushes any attempt I make to cry or beg or scream. All I’m left with is a choking dusty whine.

Everything hurts, everything in existence hurts, every cell in my body is splitting in half and I’m being wrung out like a towel.

“Please stay calm, sir.”

I can’t really tell if I want to laugh or die.

“Everything will be okay.”

I strongly doubt that.

I black out before the panic has a chance to rise above the feeling of being forced through a meat grinder. What the fuck.

\--

For the first time in months, I am unaware of my surroundings. Blissful nonexistence. The kind I had expected when I first turned around and found the end of the line twisting sharp through my organs.

Complete nonexistence.

Nothing lasts forever. When I wake up again, things suck marginally less than they had the first time, but even more so in entirely new ways.

There’s something in my throat. Becoming aware of the writhing creature working its way into my body brings it to life, and I gag around it and fist my weak hands in whatever fabric they catch first. I’m vaguely aware of trying to kick around it, to force off the beast shoving its arm down my throat and curling thorny fingers around my heart and my ribs and _what the fuck is happening to me—_

“Shhh,” I hear, “shhhh.” It fizzles through the white noise, hush hush hush, and the cold hands pulling my head back and locking too tight around my jaw pull the tentacle out of my being and palpate my throat. 

“I’m sorry, you came out more quickly than I’d expected,” says a voice, the words meaningless and monotonous. “It’s okay, just rest.”

My head hurts, it hurts too much to open my eyes, so I just give rattling stinking gasps and heave frail breaths from my paper lungs until I pass out.

\--

 _‘I forgot,’_ Eren’s voice whispers through the fog. He’s keeping his voice down, like he knows everything hurts. _‘I forgot how bad it is.’_

Would you have warned me if you did remember?

A snort, brief and humorless. _‘Probably not.’_

Good. I miss that brief moment where I’d thought I would just wake up from death like a deep sleep and move through the world a completed man.

 _‘Don’t tell them your real name,’_ Eren breathes, his voice closer to my ear now. _‘You’re John Doe to them, and you want to stay that way.’_

Forever? To everyone? Will I have to live forever in this state of anonymity? Just another thing you never fucking told me, right?

 _‘Dude, can you fucking relax?’_ His voice hurts, a tempest that my skull is too small to contain. _‘Sorry. Sorry, okay? Look, it’s just because you don’t exactly have insurance anymore. They can’t charge you if they don’t know who you are. America’s great, huh?’_

… Sorry, man.

_‘Don’t. It’s okay.’_

It’s cold here. It’s so cold. I can’t stop shivering.

_‘… Can I come closer? I’m warm.’_

…

Please.

\--

The first time I open my eyes, it’s dark in the room. Thank fucking god, because my head is still thundering. I hope to god it stops. Please, please.

It hurts.

The beeping has dampened, more tolerable now, but it’s still fast. My pulse is weak, my body sluggish. I wonder if I’m missing half of my body after all, but god knows which side because I can’t fucking feel any of it.

This does not stop it from hurting.

It’s mostly my head. 

I open my mouth. The only thing that comes out is a pathetic death rattle. The kind I choked out around a mouthful of blood something like four months ago.

No blood this time.

I blink, my eyes trying to remember how to function, and slowly move my jerky gaze from the cheap ceiling to the wall to the blank TV to the weird painting of a blurry scene stained in shades of grey. I can’t really see that well.

It takes a while for my vision to approach that of an adult, rather than a feeble infant, colors fading in faint and tinged sickly with the fluorescent light seeping in between the long blinds blocking my room from view of the hallway.

“Remember,” Eren whispers. “Don’t tell them your name.”

I look around for him, peering toward his voice, but it isn’t until my eyes trail back up to the ceiling that I find him. Lying above me casually. I guess I’m not surprised. 

I open my mouth to ask where I am, what happened, but what happens instead is the death rattle. Again. Balls.

“Do you want water?”

Ugh, I fucking hate being helpless. Given that I can’t move any part of my body without feeling like it’s being messily ripped off of me, though, I just nod shortly.

He floats down from the ceiling and stands next to the bed, waving his hand over the pitcher of likely-stale liquid on the side table. It spirals daintily out of the water-stained plastic and drips a gentle stream between my cracked lips. The effort it takes to not choke on it is exhausting.

The relief it brings does make my life momentarily better, though. I feel less like a damn mummy.

He looks down at me, dripping water into my fish-gaping mouth, and I’m thankful that his eyes reflect not pity but… what is that, curiosity? Relief? I don’t fucking know.

“Welcome back,” he murmurs, training the stream above me into a swirling ring. Like a halo. I would snort, but I don’t want my head to explode. “We’ll stay here until they kick you out or get the cops involved. I think you’ll be okay taking a break.”

Thank god for that. I let my eyes slide shut. Sleep comes near instantly.

\--

Sooner than I’d expected, the nurses start asking me questions, and it’s only a matter of time before they start digging at who the hell I am. My options are kind of slim. 

I can pretend I’ve got some brain damage that prevents me from speaking, but I doubt they’d let me leave in that circumstance. I can give a fake name, but I don’t think that fools Big Brother anymore. I can pretend to have amnesia, but I don’t know nearly enough about how that shit actually works to fool a team of doctors. I can just start screaming in stilted German, but somehow I feel like I’d end up getting deported or something, and I have yet to find out what happens if I leave my ‘parish.’ Probably spontaneous combustion.

Stalling for time is my best bet, and avoidance is kind of my specialty. 

“I’m sorry, sir, but your belongings were missing when you were found.” I stare at the foot of my bed. The nurse continues, her voice soft. “Can you tell us your name? Can we call someone for you?”

I just avoid her gaze and shake my head minutely. Fuck, this kind of behavior is gonna get me a nice long meeting with a shrink, but it’s the easiest for me. I curse my weak legs at the same time as I hug them to my chest, something I did when I was younger and still interested in being as small as possible.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to talk about it now. Would you like to talk to someone else? A psychologist, or maybe a priest?”

I shake my head harder, burying my face between my bony-ass knees. The sheet smells like it’s been lurking in a closet for a hundred years, and the thick bandages wrapped around my sweaty head prevent me from turtling to the fullest extent of my ability.

“Alright, sweetheart, alright,” the nurse says gently. Ah, yes, the ‘talking to a scared little boy’ voice. Can’t say I’ve never heard it, but I’ve definitely never heard it applied to a grown-ass man. “We’d really like it if you would talk to someone, though, okay? Isn’t your family worried?”

Not about this, I imagine. I shrug my shoulders, fisting my hands in the sheets. 

She waffles for another few minutes. I actually feel pretty bad. This lady seems like she really wants to help me as a person, not me as a pile of money. Earnestly doing no harm, sort of thing. The nurse before her had basically tried to mug my social security number off me. Luckily, my sinuses chose that moment to threaten an almighty sneeze, and she mistook the tears streaming down my face as mental distress, rather than a continuation of the battle to not accidentally blow out my aching brains. The benefits to that were many, including the buggering-off of Nurse ‘Roid Rage and the general banning of cops from my presence.

The nice nurse kindly promises to bring me something special with dinner. I sniffle. When she leaves, Eren drops up through the floor and sits on the metal end of my bed. “You would not believe the conversations they’re having about you in the break room. Right now the fight is mostly between runaway minor and schizophrenic. You know there’s a guy down there swearing up and down that you’re no older than sixteen?”

Jesus Christ. Out of all the things I think of my general appearance, ‘baby face’ is not one of them. Shows how good Trost doctors are. I’m cultivating a good crop of stubble here. I just raise an eyebrow, trying not to give away to any potential bystanders that I’m talking to an invisible man.

“Anyway,” Eren continues, kicking his feet against the bars of the footboard. “Light a fire under it, wouldja? They’ll only beat the cops off for so long, especially if the guy with social services on hold wins.”

“Fuck off,” I mumble, with about as much venom as always. He chuckles and laces his fingers over the back of his neck, watching the nurses and doctors and patients move through the hallway.

\--

They tell me a fat dog found me in a creek, face up, lips blue, and bleeding from the head. Looks like I hit my head on a rock, they say, but I didn’t have a wallet or phone so the police suspect foul play.

Anyone who will listen still ignores my requests to drop the matter. Something about how my “current mental and neurological state precludes reliable reasoning.” Fuck off. I give it a month before they cold-case it.

My efforts at gathering enough strength to move around are almost entirely fueled by my distinct distaste for this whole goddamn situation. It’s not long before I have the energy for brief walks around my dinky little ward. Between the venerable staff and the fossils that pass as patients, I’m very sure that I’m the youngest person on the entire fucking neurology floor. 

May 5th rolls around and finds me already about at my breaking point. I’m itching with boredom. It’s like the last time I was stuck here, only a thousand times worse because I can’t even snoop around. The newspapers have run a few tiny, vague ads about me, mostly just a plea for information. They can’t give much more than that, between the apparent questioning of my age and my stubborn noncompliance. 

“Happy Monday,” comes a cheery voice from the door. From the way the traffic through the hallways is a little more sluggish than usual, I’m guessing that it’s fucking beautiful outside. I shrink into my pillows slightly, prepared to assume my apparent runaway schizophrenic youth persona, but I have to admit that the person grinning and pushing a wheelchair toward me is the last person I’d have expected.

“Petra?”

The redhead laughs quietly, kicking the door to my room shut, and flounces over to my bed. “I’ve come to break you out,” she whispers conspiratorially, pulling my finger monitor off. She cups her hand around it, breathing into her fingers, and the screen’s momentary flatline resumes the even shape of my vitals. Interesting.

She has the good graces to turn around while I stuff myself into the clothes she’d brought. It’s a relief to put clean pants on for once (the breeze was becoming a little much), and the red beanie she’d brought hides my shaggy hair and lingering bandages. I wish I had time to shave, too. I somehow doubt the mountain man look works for me.

Petra passes easily as a nurse, a turtleneck covering her scars, light blue scrubs making her a convincing con here. People even nod to her as they pass.

We’re alone in the elevator creeping toward the first floor, so I lean my head back to her and catch her light smile. “How long are you staying?”

She reaches down and pulls a thread from my bandage out of my bangs, tucking the stray hairs under my hat. I must look like some kind of hobo. Either that or Bill Murray. “Just long enough to help you with this little heist, and long enough to make sure your escape doesn’t create any problems.” She grins. “I haven’t been down here in almost a hundred years, my heart’s pounding.”

I smile at her. 

I’ll ask her another day how she died. The way her eyes light up as she investigates all this foreign technology, wheeling me easily through the halls and toward the side door… I’m not gonna fuck with that.

\--

Eren meets up with me at the employee smoking area around back. Petra stands close behind him, in case anyone rolls by. I take a few moments to acclimate to the warm air before I have to leave my wheelchair. Seeing as they’ve been missing for the last few days, I guess my old clothes are forfeit. It’s too warm for the hoodie anyway. I much prefer the thin flannel Petra had apparently stolen from some cologne-smothered hipster on her way here, even if I smell like a fucking patchouli farm. 

“What’s the plan now?”

“Nothing yet,” Eren replies, scratching at the back of his head. Petra sings under her breath to give the appearance of a conversation. “Just take the time to adjust.”

“I went through all of that to just keep doing the same shit?”

“For now, man, they didn’t put you down here for nothing.”

“I’m not gonna live in the library, dude. I cannot tolerate Nancy fucking Drew.”

“You don’t have to,” he replies, turning to peer at Petra, who just smiles at him and whistles the jazzy bridge to her song. She tosses me a set of keys from somewhere in her scrub pockets, two of them, silver and near-identical. “We got you a place to live.”

“Oh goody,” I spit drily, scratching at the weird-looking facial hair I’m unwillingly germinating. “Where?”

Eren gives me a look that is some insane mixture of hesitance, amusement, and pity.

\--

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

I glare at Eren, the gloomy fluorescents of this fucking stupid-ass apartment shining bright on the way he’s biting his lip. 

“This is bullshit.”

“Listen, they didn’t say anything specific about the location—”

“Oh fuck you—”

“And Hanji isn’t exactly an interior decorator, okay? They haven’t been down here in a long time, and shit like this might not be exactly intuitive—”

“ _Not intuitive?!_ ” My voice is shrill, but I’m honestly more distracted by my wild, flailing gesturing to worry about it.

Not that there’s much to gesture at. I’ve been gifted a studio apartment, small and more than a little warm. It’s an exact mirror image of the one across the hall.

Which conveniently belongs to Marco Bodt.

And as if that’s not miserable enough on its fucking own, I would like to mention that the entire contents of my apartment are as follows: one couch, one set of extremely sharp kitchen knives.

I point in Eren’s face. “Fuck you guys.”

Eren scratches the back of his head, squinting around the apartment. 

I stomp into the bathroom. Not even a fucking bar of soap.

“Am I supposed to shave with the damn kitchen knives too?”

Eren leans against the doorway, impervious to my vile scowl, and he nods at the sink behind me. I turn back to it.

There’s a razor there now. A serious Victorian-style straight-edge, like Sweeney Todd or some shit.

I glare at the ceiling and give those douches both of my strongest middle fingers.

\--

“Okay,” Eren says, leaning toward me on the couch. I’m taking up as much of it as possible, he’s perched on the one cushion I allow him with his legs crossed under him. “It’s the same thing as always, just now people can see you.”

He digs in his pocket and pulls out the stick, which I had entirely forgotten about again. I take it, spinning it between my fingers, and realize that I had also completely forgotten about Marco’s phone. Shit. It’s either lost in the time-space continuum or at the bottom of the creek from which I’d surfaced.

I scratch at my bandages with the nubby end of the branch, scooting the wood under the edge of the beanie I haven’t quite pulled together the willpower to remove, and sigh.

So much for that.

Eren’s watching me a little more closely than usual, I realize, and I straighten up a bit and sniff at him.

“Armin can send you books if you want,” he says after a moment.

“Better not be Nancy Drew.”

“I’ll make sure he sends all two hundred of them.”

“Are there seriously fucking two hundred? Jesus Christ.”

He laughs, raking a hand through his hair, and I look around my empty apartment. This is going to be worse than before because now I can’t even wander around. I’m just gonna be stuck in a room, and I know Eren’s gonna be gone for most of it. He gets cabin fever a thousand times worse than I do. 

It occurs to me that I have no way of killing the silence. No phone, no computer, no guitar. My mouth runs a little dry at that. Better get good at whistling. 

Seven months and some. Almost eight. I don’t think I’ve ever wished harder for some kind of grassroots terrorism movement to roll through and light half the town on fire.

I remember suddenly that I’ve at least met most everyone here and take a moment to feel appropriately terrible.

Something hard thwacks into my stomach then, startling the bejeezus out of me. The high-pitched yelp I let out is more a result of the thorn that just sliced open my sandpapery cheek than whatever it is Eren just threw at me. I grumble and get myself ready to bitch and moan, but the sight of the thing in my lap stops me before I get far.

After taking a good few seconds to stare at the thing, I look up at Eren, who’s giving me a mildly terrifying look. I swallow.

It’s Marco’s phone.

“Why are you giving it back to me?” My voice is small and shaky when I ask, pulling my legs closer to me out of habit. 

He considers me for a while longer, chewing his thumbnail, then tilts his head back and sighs. “Because you haven’t forgotten what you have to do.” I swallow. He pauses, then looks at me again. “And because you always made the right decisions.”

I can’t help but feel something like dread as I let that sink in.

\--

The first time I run into Marco, I am magnanimously unprepared and still extremely stubbly. He’s distracted, though, and doesn’t notice me as he rushes past me in the hallway. I lean against my door and watch him fumble with his keys, forgetting that this is not something that people actually do. Ever.

“—Dad, please, it’s already the third time this year—yes, I know, but Portland isn’t that far. I can drive up to see you. Shit—” he drops his keys. I notice that he’s talking on a cheap Blackberry crammed between his shoulder and his ear. Temporary replacement, I guess. He starts protesting again, and then he’s silent for a few minutes, staring at his doorknob. 

The bag I’m holding seems a little heavy. I don’t know how, there isn’t shit in it but soap, razors, and a giant-ass bag of chocolate.

His phone is burning a hole in my back pocket, despite having been dead since before Eren gave it back.

Marco sighs, letting his head dip down, probably so he can rub at his eyes. 

“Dad, please, I’m so worried about you.” A pause. He sounds so goddamn tired. “Can I at least call you? Is it the same hospital as last time?” He’s already shaking his head, staring up at the ceiling. He still has those grey hairs scattered around on the back of his head. “When you’re stable again, can we please talk about moving you to the long-term care unit here, so I can see you?”

I feel really fucking terrible listening to this conversation suddenly. I never even thought about Marco having family. It’d been hard enough dealing with the fact that he has so many friends. 

His head thunks against his door, keys hanging limp in his fingers, and he doesn’t try to hide the tremor in his voice. I kind of doubt that he knows I’m here.

“I love you, Dad. Just rest for now. I’ll come up this weekend, okay? I can bring my work with me. Yes, I promise, we don’t even see clients on weekends.” Another pause. “Okay. Talk to you later.”

He doesn’t unlock his door yet, just taking a moment to hang up his phone and slide it into his pocket, letting the wood drill some strength into him. 

Of all the things I could have expected him to do next, turning around and leaning on his door is among the last. We both jolt like startled cats when he opens his eyes, him dropping his keys again and me dropping my bag, because I’d honestly forgotten that lingering in his line of sight now actually means something to him. I’m already stammering apologies, my voice cracking, trying not to look like a fucking creep, and he’s apologizing for having that conversation in the hall, and we’re both just fucking hot messes.

I could give him his phone back. I could retreat into my apartment and never come out. Instead, I shakily offer him a peanut butter cup, and instead of looking at me like I’m insane he takes it gratefully and asks when I moved in.

He sees me.

He fucking _sees_ me, and when he smiles at me around a mouthful of chocolate, hand over his lips, the corners of his eyes wrinkle and betray the lingering tears hiding there and suddenly I just fucking feel like bursting into tears again. I’m not even really sure why. 

I swallow around the lump in my throat, watching the way my scruffy ass reflects in his glasses. He tells me to let him know if I need anything.

When his door closes, I’m still staring at where he’d peeked out at me right before shutting it, and I’m being consumed by that rising dread again.

\--

The usual panic takes over fairly quickly. 4 am finds me frantically attempting to cram his phone into his stupid mail slot downstairs, trying to anonymously return it, but of course this fucking piece of shit phone is the size of a fucking dinner plate and does not fit where mail goes. That is more phone than any one human needs. Why the fuck does he need this much phone? I sincerely doubt the ninety-inch display does much to improve his Flappy Bird score, but he could probably use it to communicate with the fucking international space station if he turned the brightness up enough, Jesus Christ.

The phone does not fit, and I’m fucked out of options here. I have to give it back to him.

\--

He usually crawls into Starbucks at the crack of 7 am, questionably awake but cognizant enough to say hi to the barista that always starts his drink before he’s even all the way in the door. 

It takes approximately all of the scrote I have ever had and then some to walk up to him, and even then he doesn’t immediately notice me. I clear my throat.

“Mmmoh!” he manages, standing up straight and smiling blearily. Holy shit. “Hi, neighbor.”

I choke on my words for a second, staring between his shoes and the counter and back again, before finally managing to make mouth sounds. “Uh, you’re Marco, right?”

It’s the second time I’ve said his name out loud. Only the second. I don’t think about how it feels on my lips.

“Yeah! I didn’t actually catch your name yesterday,” he says, turning to me and leaning his hip against the counter.

The thought to give him a fake name doesn’t even occur to me. “Jean,” I mumble, peering up at him. He’s still pale from sleepiness, still wearing his glasses. He usually switches to contacts before his first client. I wouldn’t trust him to poke himself in the eye before coffee either. 

He extends his hand to me. Jesus.

I really hope he doesn’t catch the way I drag my sweaty palm across my thigh before I shake his hand.

“This, uh,” I start, faltering. How the fuck am I supposed to explain why I have his phone a full week after he lost it? I found it, right. Shit probably falls out of his butt pocket all the time. I dig the phone out and hold it weirdly between us. “Is this your phone?”

His eyes widen, blinking a few times. I can actually see him obtaining full consciousness. “Uh, yeah, I think so. Where did you find it?” I slide it into his hands, then shove mine into my pockets, trying and failing to not look stiff as a fucking board.

“It was in the elevator a few days ago,” I mumble.

“How did you know it was mine?” 

Shit. Good fucking question.

I swallow and glance up at him, and somehow he’s not suspicious or angry or accusatory. He just looks really happy. Like the thought that I might have stolen that shit or stalked the hell out of him hadn’t even crossed his mind. “Uh,” I start unconvincingly. “Your, uh. Your profile in the contacts list. It’s at the top.” 

“Oh, right,” he says, turning and retrieving his coffee with a warm thanks. “Are you getting anything?” I shake my head, and he smiles stupidly bright. “I have a few minutes, if you’re free?”

I cannot stop the words from coming out. “For what?”

Balls. Awkward. So fucking awkward.

He just laughs, though. No weird looks, nothing. Guy really is a fucking therapist. “You live across the hall, protocol states I should at least know your favorite color.” He tilts his head slightly, blinking at me. “If you want to, that is.”

“Y-yeah, sure, okay,” I spew too quickly, turning a little red immediately after. He’s so different from Eren. I really have no idea how to interact with someone who doesn’t have a dick for a brain. Marco just nods and goes to sit at a table by the window, and I follow and slide into the chair across from him.

There’s something creepily, insanely different about standing in Marco’s line of sight and being _looked at_ by Marco. His eyes are warm, but his gaze kind of fills my stomach and I don’t know how to feel about that. I shift in my chair, wincing slightly when one of Eren’s thorns jabs me in the ass. Bastard probably did it on purpose, knowing him. 

“Did you just move here?” I blink up at him, lacing my fingers in my lap. No, but that’s weird. 

“Yeah,” I mumble, clearing my throat and continuing more strongly. “Well, kinda. I was down in San Diego for college, but I grew up here.” It’s really fucking weird how I have no impulse or desire to lie to him. I wonder if therapists have some kind of black magic or something. 

“Mm,” he says, sipping his coffee gingerly. The way he winces a tiny bit tells me he just burned his tongue. “That’s cool, so you know people here?”

“Not anymore. They all moved other places.”

He hums and nods, putting his coffee on the table and crossing his arms behind it. “I’m here on externship,” he says. I’m only vaguely clear on what the hell that is. I nod anyway. “It’s like a, uh, a practice year. I’m still in graduate school up in Seattle technically, but for now I’m a clinician across the street.” He smiles and points over his shoulder toward the building across the street. I know.

I nod, absently wiping my hands across my thighs. “So, you’re a therapist?”

“Yup!” He laughs, wrapping his hands around his coffee. God. “I’m really glad you didn’t say ‘shrink.’ Most people do.”

“O-oh.” I lick my lips. “Well, I kinda went to a therapist for a while, so I know better.” Wait. Why am I telling him this? What the actual fuck am I doing? Why can’t I stop looking at that stupid freckle by the corner of his eye, the first one I’d noticed a hundred years ago? Stupid freckle. It disappears in his laugh lines.

“So, Jean,” he says smoothly, sipping his coffee again. It’s still too hot. He’s not gonna ask why I went to therapy, I know he’s not, but I almost wish he would. Not like he has anything to compare this version of me to. I imagine I still act like I’ve got a broom up my ass. I try to relax my back muscles, hands still moving across my thighs. “What do you do?”

“For work?”

“Mhm.”

“I, uh,” I start, staring at the table. “I work from home. Computer programmer.”

“Do you like it?”

I shrug. No I do not fucking like my job, and I’m not talking about the programming I actually did before I got shanked. “It’s alright.”

“What about when you’re not working?”

I actually have to think about that one. I hadn’t exactly anticipated a goddamn interview. I hadn’t anticipated any of this. Definitely not the way his nails are chewed down, not the way he tilts his head when I think for too long, not the way his bangs brush against his eyebrows because they’re starting to get a little longer than he usually keeps them.

More than anything else, I hadn’t anticipated being so… not-panicking. This is exactly the kind of situation I always found immensely nerve-wracking, the thing that always made me sweaty as hell, and I feel fucking fine. 

Christa must be some kind of miracle worker. Eren helped too. I guess.

I startle a little. “Shit, sorry,” I mumble. “I got distracted.” I point lamely out the window, where an old lady is walking a lazy-ass fluffy dog slowly down the street. He turns and looks, laughing at the way the dog sits and waits for the old lady to pass it before continuing its journey. “What did you ask me?”

He turns back to me and grins, shifting in his seat. Probably crossing his legs under the table. “What do you do for fun?”

Oh shit. Right. “I read.” Yeah, whatever articles I found on the internet when I couldn’t sleep. It’d been a while since I’d had the attention span for a whole book. “Watch movies, listen to music, you know. Normal shit.”

He chuckles, nodding and leaning his chin in his hand. “Any non-normal shit?”

Reaping the souls of the damned. I shrug, pulling my flannel’s sleeves over my hands. “I dunno, I play guitar sometimes.” Well, not anymore. I imagine my poor, sweet guitar went the same way as the rest of my worldly possessions. 

“Oh, really?” He looks… weirdly excited about that. He sits up, leaning toward me. I can feel my eyes widen. “Are you good?”

Yes. “Probably not,” I reply, the first answer off my lips. I laugh awkwardly, scratching the back of my head, and he laughs too, and then everything’s a little less awkward.

“Ah, crap,” he says suddenly, pulling the Blackberry out of his pocket. “I’m so sorry, I totally forgot that I have a meeting this morning.” He looks up from the phone and smiles at me apologetically. “I’ve gotta run.”

“Oh, it’s cool,” I say, leaning back in my chair. 

He slides out of his chair and checks to make sure he has everything, including his enormous dead phone, then grins up at me again. “I’ll see you around, yeah?”

“Yup,” I nod, licking my lips again. “I’m not far.”

God. The fucking Disney prince laugh. He pats me on the shoulder and goes about his way, humming to himself, and I stare down at the table for much longer than I imagine it takes for him to leave.

“Do you really play guitar?” Eren asks. I had kind of expected his voice to come from my ass pocket, given that that’s where his branch is living, but he’s occupying the seat Marco had just vacated. “Don’t look over here, crazy.”

I sigh and run a hand through my hair, sliding out of my chair and mumbling an assent to his question as I turn to meander out of the Starbucks. 

\--

Just because I don’t explicitly need sleep doesn’t mean I don’t do it. In fact, with a resounding fuck-all to do and a distinct lack of interest in Armin’s book on viral disasters (epidemics, says the first sentence, which is about as far as I got before I put the book over my face and gave up), I find myself napping a lot. Having a body actually makes doing shit kind of tiring. That’s the big difference between before and now. I’d totally forgotten.

Plus, I’ve run out of creative ways to pile peanut butter cups on the empty kitchen counter. At least I’m clean-shaven now, shit was itchy as hell.

I hear Marco coming and going every day, but he never stops by. I have no real reason to go knock on his door either, seeing as I’ve run out of stolen possessions to return to him.

It’s about a week after the Starbucks thing when Eren knocks the book off my face and makes obnoxious noises until I pay attention to him. “Nngh,” I manage, giving him a dirty squint.

“Dimo Reeves.”

I scrub a hand down my face, still groggy. “Bless you.”

“No, you fuckwit,” he growls. “We have to go. Dimo Reeves is passing.”

My eyes fly open.

Oh. Fuck.

The retirement home in which Dimo Reeves had lived out his days isn’t far from the apartment, but even with the rush in my step it seems like it takes forever to get there. My heart’s pounding the whole way.

The woman at the desk is wearing one of those dumb paper flu masks. I raise my eyebrows at that, but she isn’t paying attention. She’s just typing away at her computer, squinting at the screen. I approach the desk and clear my throat, and as I do, Eren says, “Your name is Flegel Reeves. You’re Dimo Reeves’s son.”

The fuck I am.

“Excuse me.”

The woman looks up at me, blinking, and stands. “Sir, it’s strongly advised that you wear a mask. There’s a flu going around. Is your visit vital?”

Not in that sense. “Yes.” I take the mask she hands me and put it on. It tugs on my ears and kinda itches. “Do I have to wear this?”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you onto the floor if you’re not wearing it.” She points to the hand sanitizer as well. I raise my eyebrows. “Please, sir, we’re taking all precautions. Who are you here to see?”

“Dimo Reeves.” I squirt the strong-smelling stuff onto my hands and make a show of rubbing it around, but I think I took too much, because it lingers sticky and gross between my fingers. “I’m his son.”

“Oh,” she hums, tilting her head. “I’m so sorry for your loss. You’re here for his things?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Thank you for coming so quickly, hon. Your father spoke quite fondly of you.”

“Th-thank you.” I follow her down the hall, trying not to cringe at the hacking, wheezing coughs coming from nearly every door. It sounds a little morbid, but I have a feeling Eren and I are going to be busy. I should probably figure out what volunteers wear. 

I tug the beanie down over my hair more. Hey, this kind of thing worked for Clark Kent.

She leaves me in a musty, awful-smelling room with sparse decorations and a neatly-made bed. I thank her again, trying to look the mourning-son part, and start moving through the room, not exactly interested in the few trinkets that are lying around. Some photos, a Bible, a weird little wood statue of a pig… 

No Dimo Reeves.

I sniff and glance at Eren, who’s looking around the room. I can see the clench of his jaw from here. Jesus, he’s scary when he’s hunting. I keep forgetting. 

I much prefer the loser that pokes at my knees with his toes when we’re trying to both sprawl out on the couch, the one that complains loudly about how fucking subdued I am, the one that about pissed himself when my dark roots started coming in. I haven’t exactly been keeping up on the bleaching.

After a quick glance at the door over my shoulder, I whisper, “What do we do?”

The sound he makes is somewhere between a sigh and a growl. I take a hopefully subtle step back, checking the hallway again. No movement, just hacking. Ugh.

His fists are clenched so hard he’s shaking. 

When he moves, it’s sudden and fast as hell, like he lagged out or something, and he rips the closet doors open so hard they bang off the cheap drywall. He exhales slowly. Against all my instincts, I move closer.

Oh. Dimo Reeves.

He’s a fucking slimeball.

I mean that literally. He is a ball of fucking mucous-looking slime melting into the ratty carpet of the closet, shaking like jelly and trying to seep through the corner. God, gross. 

“I am not fucking touching that,” I breathe, checking the hallway again. “Why the fuck can’t you get him yourself again?”

He turns to me— _Jesus_

I trip a few steps back, chest heaving, and turn to shove the door shut. Jesus. 

Eyes locked on his, I lean against the closed door and watch his pupils blow out, black hungrily devouring his bright green. They spiral deep into his skull, so fucking dark it hurts to look into them, and I realize I’m shaking like a leaf and just barely staying up. 

I’ve never really had to watch before.

God, _God_ it gets worse.

My knees give out about the same time as his jaw cracks open, cheeks splitting in a messy Glasgow smile, and when his chin hits his chest and his back hunches too far forward to be natural, the sound of the void fills the air around us. 

I can fucking _hear_ them. I can hear them screaming. 

It pulls at me.

“E-Eren—”

He tilts his head. I feel like if his eyes were on this fucking planet, they’d be narrowed. I say his name again, my rattling breath clamoring against the cheap paper covering my face.

He steps toward me.

Oh no no no

I’m shaking violently. I yell his name, fighting over the damned, and when he takes another step toward me, my ass-saving instincts kick in and I relinquish control of my body. 

I’m crawling, scrabbling around him, diving into the closet next to the slimy shouting cursing Dimo Reeves, and it takes no thought to dig my fingers into the viscous, warm ooze and lift it off the carpet. It tries to hold on, fighting and struggling, stringy slick slapping onto my bare forearm like paste, but I get all of it and hold it out to Eren.

Here, boy. Look at that.

Eren hunches further, menacing and empty, and his loose twitching maw moves toward me.

It takes more strength than I’d think to stretch Dimo Reeves like fucking silly putty so my hands don’t join it in the abyss. Eren’s blackened razor teeth spear deep into the goop. His nostrils flare. Dimo Reeves is screaming.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

Eren inhales Dimo Reeves, down to the last desperately clinging tentacle that grasps my quaking finger like there’s anything I can do to save it. It slips and reels, Eren’s jaws crash closed, and Dimo Reeves is no more.

A stinking predatory sigh blows against me. I shrink into the closet.

_‘reap r eap r e ap’_

“E-E-Eren,” I gasp, scooting into the back corner, still too horrified to open my eyes. The whole closet stinks of Dimo Reeves. I’m getting lightheaded. 

I’m hyperventilating.

_‘e a t e at ea T EAT EATEATEATEAT—’_

_“Eren!”_

A rattling wheeze. A pause. The roar dulls for a moment. I crack one eye, squinting at Eren, and holy fucking shit he is _right fucking there_ and I’m going to die like this, he’s going to eat me, why is he going to eat me?

Please, I’m not ready—

I sob and cram myself further into the closet, clutching my knees to my chest, eyes slowly widening like I can’t look away from the trainwreck that’s about to consume my soul.

Another rasp. My eyes follow his flopping black tongue as it slicks his crooked teeth with thick, oozing saliva. 

When he bites me that caustic shit is going in all of those jagged stab wounds.

I can’t move.

Eren’s jaw claps shut. His cheeks stitch and melt together. His long, thick-jointed talons come to wipe his green slobber off of his chin even as they shrink back into hands. 

By the time his eyes have returned from his asshole, I’m light-headed and the silence is rising over me. I’m going to have a panic attack. I’m so scared, I’m so scared, I don’t want to die—

Eren reels backward, falling on his ass, and he has the good grace to fucking scuttle until he hits the farthest corner away from me. Even from here, I can see my panic mirrored in his wide, tear-filled eyes.

He slaps a hand over his mouth.

I close my eyes, counting back from twenty, I can beat it. I can beat it. I count slowly, evenly, breathing deep muffled breaths, fisting my hands in my jeans. I can beat it.

When I open my eyes again, tears slide down into my soaked mask and Eren is gone.

\--

“Aren’t you going to take anything, hon?”

The nurse flinches at the look I give her. I don’t mean to, but horror is the only facial expression I seem to have. She offers me a box of tissues and slides the hand sanitizer toward me again.

I take too much of the smelly shit again, my sticky hands somehow managing to remove my damp mask as I leave the old folks’ home.

The sky is clear and sunny. The air is warm.

I sprint back to my apartment, hoping to Christ Eren isn’t there, and when he isn’t, I collapse into the cramped shower stall and curl around myself until the shaking stops.

\--

Even if Armin’s voice is gentle and lilting from the other room, the sound of him softly calling for me makes me jolt.

“Jean,” he murmurs, following the sound of my shoes scrabbling against the shower floor. “Jean, I’m so sorry.”

I know my eyes are bugging out. I stare up at the outline of his thin frame through the frosted plastic of the shower door. He sits down with a soft sigh and reaches out to touch the door.

“That… it hasn’t happened in a really long time.” I have nothing to say to that, so I don’t. “A few hundred years at least. We thought he’d finally gotten control of it.”

“He’s going to kill me.”

Armin sighs, running a hand through his long bangs. I assume. I can only see his fuzzy silhouette. “He’s back at home for right now. Hanji and Levi are talking to him about it. Trust me, he feels horrible. I haven’t…” Armin pauses for a beat, then continues, his voice strong in a way that sounds like he’s throwing Eren under the bus for my benefit. “I haven’t seen him cry like that in a long time.”

I have no way of knowing whether or not he’s lying.

“I’m not lying. I have no reason to.” He gives a short laugh. “I love Eren, I do, but I gave up trying to make excuses for him shortly after we met. He always found some way to muck it up anyway.”

Honestly, that sounds about right. Relaxing makes me aware of how tightly-packed I had been, wincing at the soreness in my arms from clutching my knees to my chest. I uncurl and come to stand. My knees are still kind of knocking together.

Armin stands too, gently popping the door open. I have the good grace to look ashamed of the fact that I hid in the fucking shower like a fucking toddler—

“Don’t,” he says softly, reaching out and grasping my hand. He squeezes it, fingers comfortably warm and not sweaty at all. More than can be said for mine. As he leads me out to the couch, he takes a deep breath in a way that sounds like he’s going to tell me a story. “The last time this happened, he almost killed two people really precious to him.” I cross my legs under me, watching Armin idly braid his long hair. “I’m not sure how it started, but right at end of the 18th century, Philadelphia was about wiped off the map by the yellow fever.”

Oh. Epidemics. Armin smiles at me. “Is that—” My voice creaks. I clear my throat. “Is that why you gave me that book?”

“Sort of. You’ll never read about us in history books, but you’ll find us at every disaster. We’re there. Can’t not be, you know?”

I nod, pulling my sleeves over my knuckles. 

He tosses his braid over his shoulder and continues, relaxing into the couch. “Anyway, the fever’s fallout was Eren’s assignment. A lot of people died, and most everyone else ran for it. Near the end, his ankou was trying to keep everyone’s souls together, but she was starting to panic. Eren… he lost himself in it.” Armin chews on his thumbnail for a moment. I’m really hoping there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. “He was overwhelmed. There were too many people inside of him, too many souls begging for another chance. His way of dealing with it was to hide inside his own head.”

Furrowing my brow, I lean closer. Armin plays with a loose thread on the couch.

I’d almost started thinking he’d forgotten where he is when he shakes his head suddenly, a frown shaping his thin lips. “Sorry, ah.” He runs a hand through his bangs again. “I just realized, I can’t remember who the second person was.”

He is oblivious to the way I raise my eyebrows, not entirely following. “The second person?”

“Oh, sorry, sorry. Eren’s ankou was trying to ferry these lost souls, and someone was helping her, but Eren lost it. I don’t think I really need to describe to you what happened.” I feel the color drain from my face. I’d really rather he didn’t. “He nearly devoured the two of them.”

“What would have happened?”

“They would have gotten lost in the void with everyone else. But those two, they’re important people at home. It wasn’t a loss we could have taken.” He taps his finger against his lips. “That’s really going to bug me, why can’t I remember the second person? I feel like I just knew it…”

“Who was the first person?”

Armin blinks, flicking his eyes over to me, then stands. “The ankou. His sister.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Eren has a sister?”

When I open my eyes, the little blonde librarian is gone. I whip my head around, searching for him, but he’s just straight up gone.

I don’t have long to think about it before the sound of someone knocking at my door scares the shit out of me. I’m still jumpy. After checking in the mirror to make sure I look like a living human, I roll over to the door, and who is it but Marco fucking Bodt with his smile and his glasses. I give him a weak smile in return, raking my hand through my hair.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” he replies, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He’s wearing this dorky, loose tank top that shows way more of his skin than most shirts. “Sorry to bother you, uh. I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything?”

Not anymore. I shake my head, leaning against the doorframe. He shifts his weight, rolling his shoulders, and the light catches something shiny under his collarbone. Stop staring. I make eye contact again.

He’s biting his lip, looking… nervous? Does Marco even get nervous? “I just, uh.” He scratches the back of his head as he laughs. The thing shines again. What is that? Stop staring. “I kinda made too much food. I was wondering if you wanted to come over and have dinner. If you haven’t eaten yet, that is.”

I blink. I don’t think I’ve eaten in like four days. At least. I just nod dumbly, and his smile widens. Gah, deer in headlights. I shake my head and stand up straight, rolling my sleeves up around my elbows. “Sure, uh, if it’s not a bother.”

“Nope!” He grins, pushing his glasses up his nose. I pat my keys in my pocket, and he takes a step back to let me move into the hallway. He’s not wearing shoes. His jeans almost cover his feet. It’s not cute. “Oh, by the way,” he says, startling me out of my introspection. He pulls the straps to his shirt out and shows me matching pairs of shiny silver balls resting under his collarbones. “I saw you looking. They’re microdermal piercings.”

Somehow, I’m honestly more distracted by the thick, pale scar jutting out of the loose collar of his shirt, scoring up the center of his chest to the hollow of his throat.

I flush dark, I know it, and look away. “Th-thanks.”

He leans over, back into my gaze, eyes twinkling with mirth at my expense. “Would you have asked? Or would you have spent the entire time thinking ‘argh what the hell is that shiny thing?’”

Oh my god. No. No no no. I flush darker and stuff my hands in my pockets, allowing a sheepish grin to cross my overheated face. “What d’you think?”

“I thought so.” He turns on his heel and opens his apartment. I follow him in, wondering how to give the pretense of this being the first time I’ve been here. “I hope you like spaghetti. I always make too much, no matter what I do.”

“Yeah, uh. Same.” I’ve never made spaghetti in my life. He turns and hands me a plate with a fucking mountain of meaty pasta on it. Jesus Murphy. “You weren’t kidding, huh.”

He laughs, moving around to his couch. He’s got papers strewn all over his table, practically burying his laptop. I sit on the other side of the couch and set the plate on my lap. 

Marco turns to me, crossing his legs on the couch, and stabs his fork into his food. “I haven’t seen you around, I was worried you were becoming a hermit.” I blink, turning slightly to face him, and pick around my food too. If only. 

“I guess we’re just missing each other.”

Humming around an impressive mouthful of spaghetti, Marco settles back against the arm of the couch and watches me poke at the food.

“Ish no’ poishon’d,” he says somehow, an entire fucking pot of pasta stuffed in his cheeks. How he isn’t covered in red sauce is a mystery to me. I laugh, both at his distinct resemblance to a chipmunk and the assertion that I suspect him of homicidal tendencies, and his eyes fucking sparkle again. 

Even if there is too much of it, the spaghetti’s good.

\--

It’s far too easy to talk to Marco.

By the time our conversation lapses, we’ve both been done eating for ages, and the magnitude of his caffeine high has become grossly apparent. He sees me to the hallway, babbling something about working on his dissertation, and I make up something about going to bed early, and he invites me over for more poison-free food next week.

After I lock my door behind me, I lean against it and stare out the window.

Fuck. I’d almost forgotten. 

I slide slowly to the floor and scrub my hands over my face. 

Apparently my loneliness is so severe that I’d almost lost Eren’s madness in Marco’s laugh, and I’d almost lost sight of what I have to do in the way his eyes shine.

I have to reap Marco Bodt. And I have to feed him to a nightmare. 

I have to take that smile away from this world.


	5. Gods and Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> History repeats itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> special thanks to tumblr user [gonnagetnaked](http://gonnagetnaked.tumblr.com)

Eren and I are awkward around each other when he comes back, walking on eggshells for a good four days. He apologizes profusely. I tell him to stop. When he doesn’t shut the fuck up and stop apologizing, I break his nose.

May 23rd is a Friday night. Marco raises his eyebrows as I explain away the cacophonous banging from my apartment as rearranging, bloody paper towels hanging obviously out of both my nostrils. Chronic nosebleeds, for sure. I give him what I hope is a charming smile, and he laughs and quirks his eyebrows at me.

I’d just been whupping Eren pretty good. I think he’s still depressed. Regardless, he’s bleeding down the back of my neck and I’m grinning at Marco, and my chest is thrumming with confidence, so in interest of making Eren as mad as humanly possible, I lean against my doorframe and ask, “Hey, Marco, do you wanna grab a few beers?”

Eren fucks off back into the apartment. Marco grins. “Sure, there’s a place not far from here. Let me grab my wallet and put shoes on.”

I dig into the envelope on my counter that seems to refill itself with cash whenever I need something. Shit, beer and shower supplies are equally important, right? Right. Just as I’m about to leave, I remember the bloody tissues hanging out of my nose and toss them on the counter. He probably thinks I’m weird as it is.

Eren’s gone, who knows where. 

I meet Marco in the hallway, tugging at my beanie, and he smiles at me, and we’re on our way. 

The place Marco knows is a literal dive bar. I don’t remember this place even existing, lodged in a cramped basement six blocks from our building, but it exists and it is thriving. Jesus, it’s noisy.

We wedge ourselves onto tiny, unstable barstools at the end of the counter closest to the door, no man’s land for ordering. I’m a little stiff. This is the most crowded I’ve been since the party, but at least I’m as close as I can get to escape if I need it. When he and I want to talk to each other we have to lean close and shout over the loud music. Some weird, drum-heavy punk shit.

He leans in. “So you said you play guitar, right?”

I nod, throwing down some cash for our long-anticipated beers before Marco can reach for his wallet.

“Do you write music, too?” When I nod again, sipping my beer, I almost choke on the way Marco starts actually _beaming_. Holy shit. He continues. “That’s really cool! I’ve always been kinda jealous of people who can write music.” My hands are shaking. Marco straightens his posture, leaning a little closer. “I mean, I can understand writing, you know? And that’s hard by itself. Writing poetry is probably even harder, but I honestly haven’t tried since high school.” The way he laughs at that kind of makes me think that he’s embarrassed, but fuck, we all wrote puberty poetry. I just smile at him and cram more beer in my face. “But to be able to write poetry _and_ fit it to music? That’s insane! How do you do it?”

I have a mouthful of beer and my mouth is still dry. I swallow. “It’s not really poetry, I don’t think.”

“That’s even worse!” He laughs. “I can’t fathom it. It’s a real talent, you know.”

I shrug, scratching at the back of my head and staring at the counter. “What about you?”

He tilts his head, taking a good swig of his beer. “What d’you mean?”

“D-do you play anything?”

“Oh man,” he says, and god I have never met anyone who laughs as much as this guy. I push my sleeves up to my elbows and try to signal the bartender again. “I mean, I played tuba in my high school marching band. Does that count?”

“Totally!” I laugh as I gesture for two more beers. It’s something approaching happy hour, I guess. All I know is giant drafts for dirt cheap, which is something I can totally get behind. “I mean, you play music without the sheets in front of you, in weird uniforms, while counting your steps and remembering where you’re supposed to go, right? And tubas are _massive_ , you must’ve been built in high school.” Not like he’s not built now. Probably. I don’t know.

He’s laughing again, though, more than halfway through his first draft, and when he puts his glass down again he flexes his bicep at me and pokes his tongue out.

Oh my god.

I run a hand down my face and down the rest of my beer. Hands are still shaking.

“What kind of guitar do you have?”

“Gibson acoustic. Well, I did.” Poor baby, I wonder where it went. I almost miss his next question trying to remember its weight on my thigh.

“’Did?’”

Oh. Right. “I, uh,” I start lamely, rubbing my sweaty palms against my thighs. The bartender comes over with our beers finally. Marco beats me to the money punch this time. “I had to sell it after I graduated.”

“That sucks!” He looks genuinely bummed. “Oh, please tell me you were one of those weird stoners busking on the quad!”

I laugh at that, louder than I’ve laughed in a while, and he grins. “No, oh my god. I had actual classes.”

“Yeah, I feel that. I mean, I imagine what I did was easier than whatever lets you write programs, but still.”

“No way,” I say immediately, reaching for one of the fresh drafts in front of us. “No, you have to talk to people and know how they work, how the actual fuck do you manage that?”

He shrugs, finishing his drink. The beer moustache only lingers for a second before he wipes it away. “I like people. Always have.” Another laugh, he leans closer. “I drove my mother _insane_ when I was little, because I would run around all over and make friends with everyone I saw.”

“You know,” I start, turning toward him a little. “I’m really not surprised by that.”

He pokes his tongue out between his teeth. I chug half my beer in one go.

Fun fact: dead guys can still absolutely get drunk. I also haven’t eaten since he invited me over like three days ago. Bad mix.

Four beers in, I start feeling myself let go, laughing louder at his jokes and edging closer. He’s keeping pace with me easier than I’d anticipated. His cheeks are starting to flush a little red, I think, but it’s hard to tell in the low light.

“Marco?”

I turn toward the source of the voice, and he turns in his stool, and we both rest our eyes on Bert, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

“Bert!”

“H-hey,” the gangly dude replies, his eyes flicking briefly onto me before returning to Marco.

“Oh, sorry,” Marco says, turning to include me in this horribly awkward little acquaintance circle. “Jean, this is Bert, my, uh. My friend.” Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I give Bert the nod and bury my nose in my glass. “Bert, this is Jean, my neighbor friend.”

“Hey,” Bert mumbles at me. I already gave him the nod. I turn back to where the bartender is scampering around and try to gesture for more beer.

“How’s it going, Bert? I haven’t seen you around.”

“It’s going. Could be better.”

“Everything okay?”

God. I finish out my glass and slide some cash across the bar for the bartender, whenever he decides to make his way over. 

“Yeah, I guess. It will be. My granddad passed about two weeks ago.” Not here, he didn’t.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry, Bert,” and Marco really fucking sounds it. How is he so genuine? How is he so casual with this dude that he split up with just a few months ago?

“It’s okay. The home let me take his photo albums, so I have those.”

“That’s really nice.” Bert nods. 

“I’ll be right back,” I holler in their general directions as I slide off my stool, stalking toward the bathrooms before they can respond. Jesus. 

There’s a cigarette vending machine tucked in the back corner by the bathrooms. That’s weird. It does explain how everyone in this place is smoking like a chimney without loud complaints of empty packs filling the bar, though.

I feed the thing seven bucks and it spits out shitty menthols. Smoking’s a bad habit, and I know it’s terrible for me, but it gives me something to do with my hands. My chest’s gonna hurt tomorrow. Or maybe it won’t. We’ll find out. I dig into the box of matchbooks on top of the machine, duck into the bathroom to take a piss, and meander back toward Marco. I’m only a little wobbly.

On my way back, I open the pack and light a cigarette, stumbling into some huge-ass dude as I go. He accepts my muttered apology with a booming drunk-guy laugh.

Bert’s gone. Marco’s finishing off his glass and barely waits a hitch before he starts in on the next one, throat working in good swallows. It’s hot in here. I knew that before, but it’s only when I watch a bead of sweat move past his bobbing Adam’s apple that I realize just how hot it is.

I collapse next to Marco, piping smoke away from him. He startles, then smiles.

“I didn’t know you smoke.”

“Only when I drink.” I flick the thing over the thus-unused ashtray. 

He hums, I imagine, because he always gives some kind of response rather than let things trail awkwardly. I watch him through my smoke.

I was wrong. He’s not casual.

I wonder if he realizes that he’s starting to shrink, and that he’s letting me see this part of him, or if he’s just retreating altogether.

“Hey,” I say, before I catch myself. Even if I had, I’d probably still let it go. He looks at me again, a smile quirking the corner of his lips, clearly muted. With iron-clad self-control like his, I know that if he were retreating, he’d give the appearance of bouncing back. 

He’s letting me see.

My heart is hammering against my ribs.

I exhale smoke again. “You okay?”

He seems to consider this, eyes moving to my hand clutching a fresh draft. After a moment, he shrugs, and gives me the quirky half-smile again. 

I wanna make him laugh again. I don’t want to see him flicker and dim.

I finish my cigarette and swallow thick mouthfuls of bready ale.

He leans in again. “Hey, d’you wanna get out of here?” I blink at him over the rim of my glass. “Sorry, it’s just super noisy in here. I think I have some cheap wine in my apartment, if you’re game to keep going?”

So game. I nod dimly, beer sloshing up to my nose. I’d apparently just been drinking it the entire time he talked to me without realizing it, and in effect, I seem to have chugged most of it.

Did I mention that these drafts are fucking huge?

I set my glass down and wipe off my froth moustache, immediately thankful that we’d sat about four inches from the door. The air is cool outside. It feels nice against my flushed cheeks.

He watches me light another cigarette as we wander back to our building. I somehow trip over everything in existence on our way back, which makes him laugh, and halfway there he winds his arm into mine to keep us both steady.

Chain-smoking. I’m more unsteady than I’d thought. I’m giggly, too, which is fucking terrible, but as we stumble into the elevator, Marco’s getting giggly too, which is nice. It’s so nice. I’m so drunk.

When the light flicks off between the second and third floors again, I lose track of him for a minute, but when it comes back on it appears that I’d leaned too far forward in my squinting search for him, because I’m right in his flushed face and I wish the light would turn off again.

I lean back far, too far, into the wall of the elevator, and I laugh too loudly. “Sorry, lost my balance.”

He just laughs and tugs me off the elevator.

The wine is, indeed, cheap shitty box wine, and we toast it on his couch. I tug my beanie off and set it… somewhere, who knows. He watches me over the rim of his glass.

“Hey, you know that guy in the bar?” I nod, turning to face him. His gaze falls into his wine. “He’s my ex.”

I know. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Marco says, scratching the back of his head. He gives this awkward, wheezy chuckle, staring off to the side. “That’s why it got a little awkward, sorry to kill your buzz.”

I shrug, resting my arm on the back of his couch, slowly taking up more room. “It’s understandable. What happened?” Shit, that’s probably way too much to ask. Shit. I’m midway through an apology when he waves his hand at me, effectively dispelling it.

“It’s okay, it’s not like I had to throw his stuff out the window or anything.” Marco sips his wine again, crossing his legs under him. “Over the holidays, he flew out to Jerusalem to visit some family, right? Oh, he’s from Israel.” Explains the slight accent, but not his fucking name. Bertholdt. Not exactly regional. “Aside from his late granddad here, he’s got some in Israel and some in Germany, so of course visiting everyone took a few weeks, but it’s whatever.” He laughs. “I got so much work done on my dissertation while he was gone, it’s kind of insane.”

I’m nodding, slowly drinking the wine without tasting it, and definitely trying to ignore the way my vision is starting to go wonky. So much beer. Pretty sure if I make any sudden movements, I’m gonna black out, and god knows what horrible things I might do if I do. 

“So he was gone, and around New Year’s, uh,” he pauses, something flashing over his eyes. No, no, Marco, don’t tell me. Don’t tell me about this, please? Don’t ever associate me with that memory. I’m leaning closer.

“Around New Year’s, some stuff happened, you know,” he covers smoothly, and I nod too enthusiastically. “And when he made it back from Jerusalem, I guess he wasn’t really the same, and neither was I.” He shrugs, and god he’s so fucking tiny right now. He’s taller than me and broader than me and prettier than me, and he’s so small. “We just fell apart, you know? It was a mutual thing, but we both said shit we shouldn’t have, and I guess seeing him tonight kinda made me remember some of that.”

I want to kiss him.

No, fuck, abort, abort abort—I lean back against the arm of the couch, as far as I can manage, and nod again. “Sorry to hear it.” What the fuck kind of sorry response is that?

He shrugs again, his lips quirking, and drinks his wine. After a moment, he shakes himself and lightly slaps his cheek with his free hand, and the laugh he gives me doesn’t sound as forced as it could. “Whoa, sorry about that! I meant to bring the buzz back, not kill it more, I swear.” He smiles apologetically. 

I shake my head. “It’s okay. Better than bottling it up.”

“Yeah, that is very true.” He hums contentedly and stands. “Want a refill?”

“N-no thanks.” I’m now significantly more terrified of blacking out than I was before. When he plops back onto the couch with his refilled glass, he runs a hand through his hair and leans toward me. 

“Hey, you know what?”

“What?” I dig my fingers behind the couch cushion to hide the tremor.

“You should play your guitar for me sometime.”

My mouth is dry. It’s so dry. “I-I sold it, remember?”

“Aw, damn,” he sighs, leaning back again. “That’s right. You never bought another one after you got a job?”

I shake my head, which kind of makes the world flop to the right a lot. “No, uh. I h-had thin walls in my last apartment.”

“That sucks,” he groans, cracking his knuckles idly. He lets his glass rest in the space created by his crossed legs. “Why’d you move here?”

I died. 

Unable to help myself, I laugh. Loudly. I _died_. God, is this what acceptance feels like? I’m giggly again, and it’s contagious because he’s giggling too, and it doesn’t even matter that I don’t answer his question because I’m laughing and he’s laughing and his face is red, and it sounds so sweet filling the air around us.

I chew idly on my thumbnail and stare too hard at the swimming vision of him summarizing half of every movie he’s ever seen, then I’m laughing at how loudly he complains that none of these movies are on Netflix anymore, then asking me what my favorite movies are, and when he asks me again if I want a refill, I say yes, even if he almost pitches forward onto me when he retrieves my glass.

Netflix has enough content to thoroughly amuse two totally wasted dudes, it seems, but I barely watch whatever nerdy 90s cartoon he’d excitedly put on. Angry Beavers. Right. 

It’s the infinity-times-end-of-the-world… something something dare episode. 

“You must introduce yourself to one hundred unfriendly strangers,” the beaver dare genie blurts, and I groan loudly despite myself. Marco raises his eyebrows at me, drinking his near-forgotten wine.

“Whassat?”

Mouth dry again. I drown it in wine. “That doesn’t sound like a fucking nightmare to you?”

He laughs, scratching the back of his head. “It could be worse, you could have to do it naked, right?”

“Oh my god stop,” I say, shuddering heavily, and I hope he believes as much as I do that it’s from the social fear that thought brings. 

“You’re not a big fan of people, huh?”

“What gave you that impression.” It’s not a question, and he grins widely at the way I laugh at that. 

“It’s okay, you’re not awkward.”

I raise my eyebrows high, probably straight into my hair, and scrub my free hand down my thigh. “Hah?”

“You’re not!” He turns toward me again, cartoon forgotten. 

“Are you high?”

He laughs loudly, covering his mouth with his hand to try and stuff the sound back into his mouth, but it still erupts out as these bubbly little giggles. “No, I am not, sadly. But! This is an opinion I would totally agree with sober, so you should definitely take my word for it. I know awkward, trust me. You’re not it.”

There really is no proper response to that, so in an effort to stop gaping like a fish, I finish my glass around a mumbled thanks.

“Why, do you think you are?”

It’s not a question anyone has ever asked me, so when I choke out a ‘yes,’ I wonder how there could possibly be any other opinion of me. I know I’m awkward, so everyone else does too, right?

“You know what that is?” He finishes his drink as well, taking mine from me and moving to refill them. Jesus, how much wine is in those stupid boxes? I watch him over the back of the couch, leaning my chin down against the cushion. When he comes back, booze puts a sway in his hips, and it literally hurts to tear my eyes back up to his face when I take my glass back. He doesn’t sit back down. “When you’re anxious for a long time, you start noticing yourself too much. Where your hands are, what face you’re making, what your clothes are doing. Non-anxious people can turn that off. Anxious people can’t, and it sort of becomes the norm, which is stressful in and of itself.” He smiles kindly, nibbling on the lip of his glass, and I stare up at him like a puppy. “You’re not awkward.”

I want to kiss him. I want him closer, so much closer. He’s probably so warm, so soft. I squeeze my eyes shut and the world fucking reels. 

I need to leave.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you you’re not awkward?”

I only open my eyes to drink again, as I don’t want to fucking slosh the shit all over myself, and shake my head.

He’s silent for a moment, then he cocks his hip and I wanna pull up his shirt and fucking nibble on his hip bone. “How many times have you apologized for it?”

“I can’t count that high.” I meant to say it as a joke, with a laugh and a strong voice, but the raspy way it comes out paired with the way I can’t look back up at him probably comes off as pathetic. He chuckles, though, soft and not mean, and sticks his free hand in his back pocket.

 _God_ I’m a fucking horny mess.

It’s a fucking terrible idea, but I finish my glass in two good gulps and stand carefully, making sure that my feet are solidly under me before I turn to him. Good thing I can’t phase through walls anymore. I imagine if I fell over I’d just keep going through the floor.

“I should, uh. Probably get to bed,” I say, shuffling around the couch and over to his counter. He laughs at me, but I wash the glass (I nearly pitch into the sink as I’m doing so) and put it in his rack thing to dry. “Thanks for coming out.”

“No problem,” he says warmly, leaning around me to just put his in the sink. His chest brushes my shoulder.

I wash his glass too.

“Hey, do you do laundry, too?” I turn, confused, but he’s biting his lip and grinning down at me from his fucking three-inch advantage, and his eyes are twinkling with mirth again, and _god, fuck_. I smile. I hope it doesn’t look as strained as it feels.

He sees me to the door, and I swear to _god_ I was ready to leave. I was so ready. I was really about to leave, I was already standing in the hallway, but for some reason I turn around and he’s leaning his hip against the doorway with his arms crossed over his fucking sturdy chest, and the way the world feels like one of those bouncy castles under my feet gives me a very strange sort of confidence. 

When I’m in his space, he doesn’t pull back. When I flick my eyes up to his, they’re dark and speckled with flecks of gold like always, and filled with something besides amusement. When I take a shaky breath, I can taste his, a sweet mix of wine and beer.

“Red,” I mumble, grasping desperately for an excuse to still fucking be here. He’s confused, I can see it, but he just makes a questioning sound. The warm smile quirking his bitten, red lips doesn’t even flicker when the bouncy castle jolts and my chest comes to rest against his folded arms. I reach out and press my hands against his doorframe. But I don’t push away. I just look back up at him, at his warm inviting friendly amused fucking beautiful eyes, and I say, “My favorite color. ‘S red.”

“Ah, yes,” he chuckles. “I can’t believe I kept forgetting to ask.” God his breath tastes sweet. I wanna taste my name on his lips, I wanna drag my teeth down his neck, I wanna put my fucking mouth on every fucking part of him twice—“U-uh. Do you live with anyone?”

Blinking away the likely predatory glaze over my eyes, I raise my eyebrows, and that’s when I hear the sound coming from behind me.

My apartment’s door is creaking open slowly, eerily, skin-crawlingly, the room behind it pitch-black, and Eren’s staring out of the gap with hell in his eyes and a frown on his face.

“No,” I reply firmly, right before I trip across the hall and pull the door shut again. My chest is so fucking cold. I turn and lean against it, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I, uh. It’s the doorjamb, it sticks sometimes and doesn’t close all the way.”

“Oh,” he replies. He still hasn’t moved. His cheeks are still red, and he’s biting his lip, and when he smiles it slides out of his teeth in a way that makes me want to put mine on it and _fuck_ how long have I been this fucking hard? 

Fun fact: dead guys still get massive boners.

“Y-you should tell management,” he finally says, somewhat lamely, and I give a noncommittal shrug. Whatever bravery had first propelled me into his space is gone. There’s no way I can go back over there. I let my gaze drop to his feet, where his toes curl on his floor. 

“U-uh.” My voice cracks. I clear my throat and swallow. “Thanks again, Marco. G-goodnight.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. He sounds like he’s in a daze. “Night, Jean.”

When I stumble into my apartment, I lock the door behind me, and I’ve completely forgotten about Eren already so I reach down to palm at my aching cock through my jeans with a breathy moan.

Eren will not be forgotten. He grabs me by the hair and yanks me away from the door, and I’m so drunk and turned on that the sting just feels _so fucking good_. He ignores my desperate whine.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbles, steering me around. “Not gonna bother with you right now.”

He shoves me. I land face-first on the couch, and the jolt drives me halfway into a blackout.

Eren probably snarks at me further, knowing him, but the world is dark and I’m too drunk to attend to him. I just know that it feels _amazing_ to lie down, and that I wanna play my guitar and listen to a thousand songs and write a million more all called ‘Marco,’ and that rolling my hips down against the couch cushions feels awesome so I do it again, and then some more.

I wanna touch him. I wanna hold him. I wanna feel his body against mine, and I wanna know what it feels like when he fucks his tongue into my mouth, and I wanna drag my tongue down his perfect stomach and watch his back arch and his hands fist in the sheets, and I wanna make him moan for me, because of me.

I wanna make him come. 

He’s so amazing.

The world’s spinning so hard, so goddamn hard. My gasping breaths are making my mouth dry but it’s hard to breathe any other way.

I feel like I’m flying, and then I pass out.

\--

Fun fact: dead guys can still get hangovers, and mine is _brutal._

It wouldn’t be so bad on its own, but I wake up to Eren already chewing me out for whatever I did last night, and my head’s pounding before it even leaves the couch cushions.

“Shut up,” I grouse, my mouth stale. When I sit up, there’s a _very_ uncomfortable feeling in my underwear. What’s—oh.

The last few minutes of last night flood back to me. Oh.

I rub my hands down my face, and the nights replays itself in reverse behind my eyelids, and goddammit I wonder if I can get away with just fucking hiding in here for the rest of the year because fuck all of this. Maybe my eyes didn’t reflect how badly I wanted to fuck him. I probably shouldn’t hold my breath.

Balancing on two feet in the shower is too intense for my aching brains, so I just sit down in the stall and let the water pour over me until I feel like something other than a horror show.

I drag my one towel roughly over my swollen head while I stumble back into the other room and collapse onto the couch. The towel actually offers me a nice, dark respite. I just slouch into the cushions with the towel over my head like a bird or something, and who knows how long I space out.

Eren’s sprawled over the rest of the couch when I finally emerge from my towel fort, chewing his nails. He seems to have calmed down, at least.

“Brought you something.” I raise my eyebrows. My brain’s still incredibly fuzzy. “Since obviously you need a distraction of some kind, you thirsty fuck.” 

I’m too hungover to fight him. The middle finger I give him is not one of my best. “I’ll torment myself about that just fine on my own, fuck you very much.”

“I don’t doubt it.” He jerks his thumb behind himself, and that’s when I see the guitar leaned against the wall. Not just any guitar. There’s an old, faded Sharpie signature under the bridge, from the priceless god Ben Gibbard. 

_My_ guitar.

I blink hard, then stare harder, and lick my lips. “How?”

“Stole it.” I look over at him. He shrugs. “It wasn’t that hard to find, and I’m fucking bored, so you may as well do something that we can both enjoy.”

“How kind.” It actually… it really does mean a lot to me. I’m just wondering how much was fueled by an actual concern for my well-being, and how much was just Eren being bored and lonely. I wobble over to it and run my fingers over the head gently, slowly, and when I pick it up and sit back on the couch I relearn how its weight sits in my lap. I feel like I’m home.

The first song I play is just cautiously discovering it again. The next few are becoming reacquainted with it. I lose count, though, my eyes sliding closed and my fingers moving over the strings like I’d never left it, and god only knows how long I carry on like this until I remember that Eren exists again and I flash him a look.

However many songs it was, my hair is dry and the light coming through the window is the fiery orange of the setting sun.

He blinks slowly at me from where he’s relaxed across the couch.

“You _are_ good.”

I flush.

\--

It takes a good day and a half for me to put clothes back on, but in that time I find my singing voice again, and eventually I’m more embarrassed by my exposed cock than my raspy verses.

\--

I was right, by the way. About the retirement home.

It is May 27th. I’m halfway through shaving, listening to Eren tell me some asinine story from where he’s crouched on the closed toilet, when he stops mid-sentence with a weak groan and grasps his head tightly with shaking fingers. 

The razor pauses on my cheek. “Eren?”

“Hngh… hurry up. We need to go.”

My stomach drops, but I light a fire under it. “Who?”

The longer the list of names gets, the more my hands shake.

\--

The home is barred to non-essential personnel, but they’re so overrun that when I tell them through the glass door that I’d signed up for community service, a broad, greying man shoulders to the front and demands to know if I’ve had a flu shot. I nod, and he quickly unlocks the door and yanks me inside. Jeez.

I have to sign a million release forms. The nurse tells me over and over that I don’t have to do it today, and in fact I probably shouldn’t, but the desperation in his voice and the fact that what I’m actually here to do shouldn’t be put off drives me to sign the whole stack with a fake name.

Eren gives me a weak laugh. I can’t help but wonder if that’s really fear I’m sensing under his voice.

The uniform they stuff me into is one step under a goddamn hazmat suit. Not only that, but I’m in my fucking boxers underneath, because they’d made me strip off everything else. There are even little disposable booties, the same stupid powder blue as the jumper. I’m suddenly kinda glad that my job made me get a flu shot last August, because for something that usually seems so mild, the sickness haunts the tired eyes of every worker I see. What few of them there are. 

I’m told that many of the staff were ordered to stay home and wait the flu symptoms out.

My ‘job’ is simple, luckily. A list of rooms, of names, of medications and special provisions is stuffed into my hands, along with a point in the general direction of the dispensary, and then I’m left to my own devices. The names Eren had rattled off in the bathroom form gaping holes in the short list.

“I need to know that I can trust you,” I whisper as I wheel a cart of little cups of pills down the carpeted hallway, my voice muffled and shooting hot up my nose from the paper mask I’m wearing. I glance over at him, but he’s staring at the floor.

“It won’t happen again.”

“How do you know?”

Eren digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, sighing shakily. He doesn’t answer.

When we pass the first patient door, Eren stiffens, and I stop my cart and check the hallway before I try the knob. Luckily, it’s unlocked.

Empty, same as last time, but this time there’s a pulsing grey light making slow, tottering circles around the wooden cross on the wall. I watch it meander aimlessly, making its circuits, searching for something, before I have pity and pull it down. It trembles in my hands.

The whirling of the damned starts up behind me, a quiet sadness filling the air. I take a few deep breaths before I turn around. My knees are shaking. 

Eren’s there, and he’s dark again, but this time he seems… reserved. His talons are clenched like fists on his knees where he kneels in the middle of the small room. Like a well-trained dog. I could almost laugh but I _really_ do not want to poke this bear.

I feed the frail light to him. His tongue curls around it, swollen and slimy, and when he slowly closes his mouth he swallows it almost gently.

He’s being so careful.

I wonder how long he can keep it up.

Having him lurch around after me like that, with his fucking mouth hanging open like an idiot, makes me sweaty, so I ask that he stay in this room while I collect everyone else. I’d rather check every room in this place. He nods, eyes empty and tongue slack, and I haul ass back into the hallway and shut the door behind me.

Please stay there, Eren. Please.

I’m shaking so badly that it takes me a good few minutes to start moving again.

Some of the rooms are truly empty. Some have patients in them, laying weak and sick in bed. Most of them are grateful to see me, so I try to cram my douchebag tendencies long enough to be nice to these poor people while I give them medicine and fluff their pillows or whatever the fuck else. It seems fake, given the latex gloves pulled up over the edges of my stupid blue jumper thing, but I do my best.

When I find souls, I put them on my cart too. They’re so docile. None of them are like Dimo Reeves, slimy and disgusting; they’re just shaking little balls of light whispering for someone to take them home.

I really hope that’s where they’re going.

The last room on my long circuit isn’t empty, but I almost back the fuck out anyway, because the second I open the door I’m overwhelmed with this weird, terrifying skin-crawling. White noise fills my ears on my first step in.

It’s an old man. He’s lying in his bed, covered with a blanket and hooked up to oxygen, and he is _fucking staring at me_. I’m shaking.

The list. Right. “E-excuse me, Mr. … Mr. Mills?”

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t blink. He just stares. I wonder if he’s deaf.

The cup with his giant horse pills rattles loudly in my hand as I approach, my fingers slick with sweat inside my gloves. His bloodshot, glassy eyes track my movement, but his head doesn’t move. His breaths wheeze slowly, so slowly, a constant buzz of his dry throat that becomes thunderous as I move closer.

“H-here’s your medicine, Mr. Mills.” Rattle, rattle, rattle. Wheeze. I set the cup down on his bedside table. “Can you, uh. Do you need help?”

He hasn’t even fucking blinked. I want to run, I want to sprint away from his dying breaths. It’s so hard to not cry. Mr. Mills fucking terrifies me.

I shift awkwardly, and before I can reach down for the cup again, his hand moves under his sheets, so suddenly and unexpectedly that I stumble backwards and fall on my ass on the thin carpet. He _groans_ , oh my god, he groans deep and pained, and it only gets louder when his cracked lips peel apart, and I’m starting to breathe faster and my pulse is starting to thunder.

Something catches my eye. In the closet, through the slats.

A light.

My eyes flick between Mr. Mills’ now-outstretched hand and the light in the closet. It must have been a friend of his, this spirit, and I do not blame it for hiding from him. I’m willing to bet that I wouldn’t recognize him if he was my own grandfather. Not like this.

I stand again, knees knocking together, and force myself to acquire some balls.

“I’m going to help you, okay, Mr. Mills?” I speak loudly in case he can’t hear well. His hand drops, but he still doesn’t blink. God.

I hope to god that I don’t accidentally kill him when I dump his pills into his slack mouth and chase them with a cup of stale water. It spills from the corner of his lips. I swallow nervously, looking out at my squeaky work cart of souls, then reach down and apologize when I hold his jaw shut and rub at his throat like a fucking cat or something.

His hand twitches, and his nostrils flare, and his eyes widen impossibly further, but he swallows hard a few times. When I remove my hands, his jaw drops, and the pills are gone. Thank fucking god for that.

I turn toward the closet. When I step toward it, though, Mr. Mills moves at a speed I couldn’t have anticipated. He fists his gnarled hand in my jumper so hard he shakes. 

“Uh.” It’s the best response I have for the way his eyes are bugging. Oh my god, is he dying? Oh fuck.

A rattling breath escapes him, and I hold mine, but he stops and starts an equally labored inhale and I relax somewhat. Not dead. Good.

“C-can, uh. Can you let me go?”

He pulls at me. I’m sweating again. His lips pull back from his teeth, and he pulls, and when that fucking groan starts up again it lights my nerves on fire and sends panic spiraling down from my stalled-out brain. 

I’m _terrified_. I can’t break his gaze, though, and every part of me is screaming to just break his wrist and bolt and never look back.

I wish I hadn’t left Eren in that room. I need him, oh god I need him, I need him to tell me what to do—

I manage to yank out of his grip, and immediately his hand is searching for me again, his movements quick and jerky and _unnatural_ , his fingers curled like claws. I slam against the closet doors, my own hand yanking desperately at the handle. I still can’t break his gaze. Without thinking, without blinking, I reach down and fist my fingers in the soft, gentle light, and when I finally have it I am freed.

Slamming the room’s door on his unholy rumbling only dampens the sound. My heart pounds, my eyes burn with tears. I clutch the soul to my chest tightly, letting it whisper to me. It soothes me in languages no man can understand until I’m breathing less quickly.

The shaking won’t go away. My hands and my lips and my shoulders, my whole body is weak from fear as I sob into the poor soul that had been trapped with that man.

I wonder how long Mr. Mills has been like that. How long since someone spoke to him as if he were human, rather than just cramming medicine in his throat and trying not to look at him. How long since he’d seen his wife, his children, how long since this friend of his had sat with him and laughed at his old timer tales. I wonder what affliction made him like this, weak and terrifying and unable or unwilling to communicate.

When the thought hits me, I give in and cry, sliding down the door until I’m curled around Mr. Mills’ friend. It’s a thought I’d never anticipated having.

The terror driven into me by Mr. Mills has made me so fucking glad that I died when I did. 

And that is a horrifying thought.

The friend comforts me. They wipe the tears away from my face, still whispering to me, still spreading warm rays of light around my ribs and under my chin. It’s like a hug. 

My friend joins the other souls whispering on my cart, tittering and… looking? Up at me? They’re just little fuzzballs of light, they don’t have eyes. Regardless, when I lean down on the handle of the cart and look at them, they shift and move, and I feel weirdly like every grandparently urge every one of them has ever had is being directed at me now.

This is so fucking bizarre.

I clear my throat and stand again, wiping my eyes. “I’m okay,” I mutter to no one, and I choose to ignore the collective sigh that moves through the fucking old fogey peanut gallery.

Clearly, I am losing my mind.

\--

Including the first, I feed a patiently-waiting Eren fourteen souls. Fourteen grandparents, fourteen spouses, fourteen lonely old geezers. Every one of them has a name, and probably eighty or more years of distinct human experiences, and I genuinely wish them well when Eren swallows them gently into the dark.

The staff is all fuck-knows-where when I’m done. I just dump my uniform in the big red bin, take an excessively hot shower as I’d been directed, and resume my street clothes. My hands are bright red from scrubbing them.

I leave through the heavy staff door behind the lockers.

The late May air is warm around me, birds are chirping happily, and fourteen people are dead.

\--

Eren sits right up against me where I’m curled in a ball on the couch, my hands hanging listlessly off the edge. We stay like this for a few hours. 

“How can you do this for all eternity?”

He doesn’t answer at first, just shifting further into me. “Dunno,” he mumbles finally. 

I can’t tell whose idea it is. Maybe both of us simultaneously. Either way, I roll onto my back and spread my legs around him just as he crawls over me, his teeth savaging his lip, and we just kind of fall into a position where we hold each other and shake.

I’m guessing that he’s recovering from being Death again. 

Who knows what I’m doing. All I know is that I want desperately to be held. 

His arms worm under my waist, squeezing me against him, and his head is warm and heavy against my chest. The sun sets and the room is growing dark around us when he speaks again.

“Devouring them this way is better than the alternative.”

“Which is?”

He sighs, his fingers sliding against the small of my back, and he shifts in my lap while he considers his answer. “Do you remember the graveyard?”

How the fuck could I not? “The Lost?”

“Whatever you call them now. Yeah. That’s what happens. When they don’t have bodies, they just wander until they start to… decay. They shift and pull until they have form, but their image is rotten and unstable.” He turns and leans his pointy-ass chin on my sternum, and I look down at him. His eyes are bloodshot. It makes the green so much fucking brighter, so much more intense. I blink. “The result is the thing we reaped in the graveyard. I told you, they go bad if they’re left to wander.”

I wince a little and press my fists to his ears, grinding just enough to annoy him. “Don’t fucking talk about them like they’re food or something. The Lost were people once.”

“But not anymore.”

With a sigh, I throw my elbow over my eyes. 

“… Your chin’s pointy.”

He wiggles his jaw and digs it deeper.

\--

June 6th is a Friday, and I’m alone in the apartment for now. Every few days another person dies at the home, but it’s nothing like that sudden flare from a week and a half ago. We just go in, and we take them, and we leave again. The home opens up for visits again once the flu dissipates to just a few patients, who are shut quietly in their rooms until they either get better or succumb.

Mr. Mills wasn’t there after our first encounter. His name was Frank, I learn, and he was transferred to the hospital’s intensive care unit for “neurological complications.”

I’m not used to it. I doubt I ever will be. Eren’s stopped saying as such.

I haven’t seen Marco in two weeks. He hasn’t dropped by to invite me to dinner, and I haven’t gone over to ask. I probably creeped him out or something. Dude was just trying to be nice to me, and I went and popped a drunken boner on him. I wonder if he still thinks I’m not awkward.

No, really. I wonder. I wonder strongly.

Just as I’m idly inventing tunes on my guitar, and literally the second the thought to ask Marco out for beers enters my head, a few soft knocks land at my door. I lean my head up and stare at it, thinking stupidly that Eren wouldn’t knock, before I realize that _oh fuck_ Eren wouldn’t knock.

“H-hold on!” I scramble off the couch and place my baby in its stand, then I shuffle over to the door and try not to look weird as I open it.

Luckily, Marco looks just as uncomfortable as me. He grins, though, and rubs at the back of his head. “Hey.”

“Hi,” I mumble. 

I remember desperately wishing to make him come, and I turn bright red. Shit. 

Before the residual guilt over eye-fucking him has a chance to spiral out of control, Marco speaks again, his voice somewhat hesitant. 

“S-sorry, uh. ‘S been a while.”

“Yeah. I, um.” No excuse comes to mind. I just suck on my lip.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets. I notice he’s still dressed nicely, still carrying his work bag. “I was just coming home from the clinic and I kinda heard music. Were you playing?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah, a little.” I lean against my doorframe and stuff my hands in my pockets.

“It sounded nice.”

“Th-thanks.” I lick my lips. The pause stretches. I should apologize. For what? For everything, anything? For being so awkward?

“D’you—” He interrupts my thoughts and squashes the rising apology, then pauses to bite his lip and squint at me. I know what he’s gonna ask. At least, I think I do. I hope I do.

I offer him something I haven’t offered anyone in years.

“Do you… do you wanna hear it?”

My breath stops as his face lights up. Fuck.

“Y-yeah, I do. I’d like that.” He gestures at his door with his thumb. “I can make dinner in exchange, if you want.”

I do want. I nod. He grins.

I’m glad that he doesn’t follow me into my apartment. It’s dark, and there’s still nothing in it but piles of ancient books, a guitar, and a couch. I grab my guitar and come back to the door, closing it behind me while he unlocks his.

To try and stem my jitters, I lean my baby against his couch and help him make dinner. He doesn’t tell me I don’t have to. He just smiles and gives me vegetables to wash and cut, and I do gladly. While he cooks, he hums contently. Somehow, we move together in his little kitchen easily. It’s all so… so easy. The awkwardness just falls away again.

After we eat, I bully him until he lets me do the dishes. He watches me do them, arms folded on the back of his couch. I know he can’t really tell me about his day, what with doctor-client privilege, so I don’t ask. 

“What’s your favorite song to play?”

I blink at him, drying my hands after dropping the last fork in the rack, and ponder that question. I mean, all of them, really. It’s a hard question. 

Finally, I just laugh, coming around to join him on the couch, resting my guitar comfortably in my lap. “There’s a lot.”

Marco hums and taps a finger against his lips. “What do you feel like playing?”

Better question. I grin at him and move my fingers where they belong. My heart’s beating hard, but Eren’s been staring at me while I play for so long that when I close my eyes I slip into the zone easily.

Marco’s not Eren, though, and his presence doesn’t fade. Not even when I start to play.

I don’t think he’d been expecting me to sing, too. I hadn’t really meant to. The chords sound empty without it, though, so I just take a deep breath and say fuck it.

My voice stops shaking and gains confidence after a few verses. It’s not like Marco’s gonna throw tomatoes at me. In fact, I’m very sure that if I opened my eyes right now, he’d be watching my fingers move across the strings with nothing but some positive emotion on his face.

The extent to which I trust him is ridiculous. My heart slams for a second. The guitar humming against my chest soothes me again, though, and I move into another song without even thinking about it. 

I stop after three or four and crack my knuckles, then slowly open my eyes. He’s fucking _glowing_ , which is a bullshit attribute to assign a face, but there’s no other word for it. I can feel my face flushing dark with delayed shyness. Out of habit, I pull my sleeves over my hands and hide them in my lap.

“Dude, you lied to me!”

Blinking, I look up at him again. He’s biting his lip against a laugh. I just raise an eyebrow.

“You said you weren’t good. But look, your pants are on fire.”

I actually fucking look, like a dumbass, and he laughs long and loud, and when I smile at him again he grins and oh fuck. Fuck.

Shit.

He’s so beautiful, framed by the dark side of the sunset through the window behind him.

Oh no.

I could fucking cry.

I play for him instead, trying and failing to veer away from covering sappy songs about feelings, but if he asks I will absolutely insist that they’re just the easiest to play. 

\--

“How was your weekend?” I’m not curious. I’m just making small talk. That’s all.

Marco blinks up at me from his laptop, then smiles warmly. I resist the urge to duck behind the couch cushions so he can’t see me. “It was nice! My friend Christa threw me a birthday party on Saturday, which was pretty wild.” I stare hard at his couch cushions. I’ve been avoiding Christa like the plague, but I really miss her face, if we’re being honest. He mistakes my expression. “I would have invited you, but—”

“When’s your birthday?” I peer up at him and hope he gathers from my face that I really don’t care that he didn’t invite me. Birthday boys shouldn’t be confined to the darkest corner of the room with their neighbor.

He gets it. Smiling and pushing his glasses up his nose, he says, “Uh. Today, actually. I’m a whole quarter of a century old.” Today is June 16th. He laughs, stretching. “Feels like I should be having a mid-life crisis or something.”

Mid-life.

I cover my sharp inhale under a cough and fist my hands in my lap, waiting until the thunder stops to look back up at him. “You should take a break.”

Wide eyes blink curiously, but he saves whatever he’s doing and lets me drag him out of his apartment and into the balmy summer evening.

Trost may be a dead-end shithole, but you know what, King’s Fountain has easily the best ice cream on the entire west coast and it’s the least I can do to buy Marco a damn sundae for his birthday. I’m really not surprised that his favorite is coffee ice cream, given the sheer amount of it that he drinks.

We’re sitting on a weird stone wall by the river, eating our ice cream in the same comfortable companionship he always shows me. The sun shines bright and lights the river on fire with its dying rays. Old people feed what few ducks there are. At least we’re not cursed with seagulls.

“So, Jean,” Marco says, licking a bit of melted ice cream off his lip. I stare resolutely into my own melting strawberry cone. “When am I allowed to hear a song you wrote?”

I laugh a little. “Would you believe me if I said I forgot them all?”

“Absolutely not!” He elbows me gently in the ribs. “You don’t have to, but I have to admit that I’m interested.”

My ice cream’s dripping over my fingers. I’ve given up on trying to catch the drops. I don’t really know what to tell him about those songs of mine, pages on pages of crying about how I can’t sleep and blah blah blah. I’ve hidden them pretty staunchly over the years. I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think Eren’s even heard one. 

Marco doesn’t make me answer him, which is nice. We sit in silence for a while, watching the ducks and the water, kicking our feet against the lopsided stonework.

“Have I told you what my dissertation is about?”

I know. I shake my head anyway, turning to face him.

As he’s explaining it to me, I have to admit that I space out, because the way the sunset colors his face and the way his increasingly excited gesturing makes the humid air move between us feels like the kind of dream that I never want to wake up from.

… Ugh.

\--

Time passes like this. The deaths stop again, Eren starts getting cabin fever again, and once a week at Marco’s turns into twice, turns into near every other day that I eat dinner with him and play songs for him, and it’s not long before he scoots toward me on the couch and starts requesting repeats of the ones he really liked.

I’m not terribly surprised that he’s a big Death Cab fan. He’s an emotional wooby teddy bear, I swear it. Then again, I’m the one with more than a handful of their songs memorized and a signed guitar.

The way he fills my chest does not go away. In fact, it gets worse.

It’s June 30th when I’m dozing on my couch, hands resting idly on the body of my guitar, made sleepy by the hazy summer air filtering through my window. I’m about conked out when a pair of eyes pop into my line of vision. The only reason I startle is because they’re Armin’s fairy-tale blue, not Eren’s usual turbulent green.

“Jesus,” I squeak, and he smiles at me. When he straightens up, his hair slips back over his shoulder. He holds something out to me. A book. I blink up at him.

“Most of this one is pretty dry,” he says. “But I marked the story I think you should read.”

The thing is old and smelly, dry in my hands. Eren reaches up from the couch and pulls Armin off his feet and into his lap. I ignore them both and run my fingers over the title, gold leaf pressed into the worn leather cover.

_The Purge._

Armin’s scolding Eren for being so weirdly cuddly, struggling in his grasp. Eren resolutely ignores him and nuzzles against his neck. I would call him a thirsty loser, but.

“It’s—Eren, _jeez_ —it’s a creation story from another place.”

I blink up at Armin. He smiles. “What, like… Europe?”

His smile widens and crooks a little. “Not quite.”

… Whatever. I place it to the side and get up to make sure my guitar is safely resting on the stand, then return to it. Armin has resorted to violence, but months of wrestling me has made Eren resilient.

The pages are old, badly yellowed. I worry that they’ll crumble under my fingers. They’re stronger than they look, though, and I notice as I flip through that the book is handwritten. The ink ebbs and flows, faded in parts and smudged in a few others, but the spacing is even and the words are written meticulously. And in English.

I flip to the section marked by a thin metal bookmark, near the middle of the ancient tome. The same small handwriting spells out the title. ‘Gods and Monsters.’ I grimace at it. Kinda deep for Friday night.

“I translated it. A long time ago.” I look back over at Armin. He’s given up, slouched back against Eren’s chest. Jeez, I’m glad Eren doesn’t like me that much. Too intense, too overwhelming. “It won’t take you long to read it,” he continues, his voice speaking less his words and more ‘you should read that instead of whatever else you’re trying to do.’

With a sigh, I sink into the couch and start reading.

\--

The further I get, the more I realize why Armin wanted me to read this, and the less I like the book or the story or really anything around me.

It’s a story about love. It’s about angels and demons, but not in the biblical sense, and not in the holy sense. In this world, they just each live on a different plane than humans, and they are irritating as fuck. Like _Thor_ mixed with the _Iliad_ irritating.

To make a long story short, there is an angel, a demon, and a battle amongst the humans that everyone gets way too involved in. Both sides take human champions. By ‘take,’ I mean they devour their souls (yes, both sides) and wear them like meat suits to work out their intense aggravation on each other.

The angel in his meat suit is parading around the battlefield, looking for a fight in the middle of a war, when he lays eye on someone he knows. A demon he’d met once. One that sowed the seed of a blasphemous thought in his mind long ago, and that he’d been unwillingly cultivating for an eon.

The demon is dying.

He is lying in his gored meat suit on the blood-soaked sand, his mouth open and gasping, one eye missing. Clearly dying.

The angel makes a choice fueled not by loyalty to his brothers, but inspired by the blooming treason that fills his mind, and when he lifts the demon out of his sack and falls away with him, he saves the demon’s life.

They hide together for ages. Eventually, they fall in love.

The demon, though, does not belong on this or any other plane. He should have died and dissipated into the endless abyss, but there he is.

Despite his efforts, and despite the angel’s intense and unconditional love, the demon falls into madness. The angel suffers together with his lover, not realizing that the dark and consuming thoughts that fill his restless dreams while they sleep together are leaking into his soul from the demon he’d so desperately devoted himself to.

When the madness shatters open, it floods their tiny lonesome world, and it has nowhere to go but the mortal plane below them.

The demon destroys nearly everything. The angel can only watch in horror. The righteousness he’d so boldly cultivated when living amongst his brothers has fallen away in the demon’s grasp. Now he knows only despair.

He cannot bear to destroy his maddened lover. How could he? How could he stare into those loving eyes and gut the one thing he’d come to trust?

In the end, he banishes the demon back to their lonely planet. He locks the demon there, and then he disappears from the annals of history, his own sanity slowly slipping too.

\--

Armin’s been watching my face, and as I’d read and my frown deepened, Eren had started watching too.

No light at the end of this tunnel.

I close the book slowly, staring at the title again, and when I look up at them they’re both tense.

Rage. I’m so mad, but I couldn’t begin to tell you why. I’m just angry and restless and I want to leave. Anywhere. These archaic words are crawling through my muscles, pulling them tense, grinding my teeth and curling my hands into fists.

“So, what,” I say quietly, my gaze moving between them. “You trying to say something?”

Armin sighs. “It’s not quite that severe, Jean. I just… you have to be careful.”

“Of _what_?”

“Things out of their proper place have energy, the wrong kind. It’s easy to be consumed by it.”

I stand suddenly, dropping the book into the dent left by my ass, and before either of them can say anything to me I’m out the door.

Really, I’d meant to storm out of the building altogether, go somewhere farther and just think for a while, but my journey is surprisingly short. 

Before I lose the pissy fuel, I knock a few times.

Marco’s home. He answers the door, blinking at me from behind his glasses, baggy sweats rolled up to his knees. 

He’s wearing my hat.

“Jean, hey. Are—hey, are you okay?”

Be brave. Be brave. 

The mental images from the story flood my brain and fill my mouth. I feel my eyes burn with tears.

_Brave._

I don’t know what I came here to say, but it’s not what comes out next.

“I like you.”

… Oh, _fuck._

The pause that stretches between us is long and _so_ awkward. On my part. He’s just staring at me, his lip twitching. He’s mad? But he doesn’t look—oh god, oh god.

I stumble over my words. 

“Fuck, shit, I’m sorry, Marco—”

“Jean—”

“—So sorry, I just, I don’t, _fuck_ —”

He doesn’t try talking over my anxious babble. He just steps out to me and wraps his arms around me, and when he pulls me against his chest he’s _so warm_ and so strong against me, and he dips his head to bury his face in my neck, and fuck I have never wanted anything so badly in my life. And not in the drunken horny way.

I fist my clammy hands in his stupid Captain America shirt and breathe in the smell of his skin.

The longer he holds me, the more I’m convinced that ‘like’ is not a strong enough word.

It’s an eternity and not long enough when he pulls back and leans his forehead against mine. His eyes are closed. I want to see them, so pretty and bright, but I’m also terrified that they’d be filled with tears. Or apprehension. Or pity. 

“I like you, Jean,” he breathes. My heart skips a thousand beats. “It’s just. God, I feel terrible.” I close my eyes too. His voice starts to waver. “I’ve just been so fucked up since the new year. Oh, you’ll think I’m crazy, and I’ll explain it to you one day, but not now.” You don’t need to. God, you don’t need to. 

I can already feel my heart breaking.

I press closer. I hope he doesn’t hate me for it, or for the way my cheeks are damp and dripping onto my shirt. I bite my lip, trying to breathe. 

His arms are still shaking around my waist. 

“Can I ask for something really selfish?”

I open my eyes again, and his are bloodshot with tears. My stomach sinks through the floor. The urge to wipe away his tears is strong, but I’m too scared to move for fear of breaking this. I just nod, my forehead sticking to his in the humidity of the hallway.

“Will you give me a little time? I just—” The sigh he lets out against me smells like coffee. “—I just need a little time to try and sort myself out. You’re too good for the way I am now. Can I ask that?”

Marco could ask me to pull down the stars and cut the constellations out of the darkness and I would do it.

I just nod again, lamely, my shoulders shaking in the effort it takes to hold back my gross sobs. He sighs again, tears finally spilling down his cheeks too, and he squeezes me tighter. It’s not close enough.

“I don’t… I don’t know how long—”

“Don’t care.” My voice cracks, weak with tears. I don’t want him to give me that option, though. I don’t want any out he tries to offer me. I just want him. I hope he picks that up from the way I sniffle.

“Don’t wait forever,” he mumbles, still trying to fucking pretend like there’s anyone that could possibly fill the hole shaped like him.

I’ve loved people before. Don’t get me wrong.

It’s never been like this.

Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, it filled every part of my being and wrapped itself around my organs and breathed life into them. It pulses like a burning sun when I’m near him. It aches like a chasm when I miss him.

I peer up at him again. He’s biting his lip, watching me come to this extremely uncomfortable realization. 

“Forever’s relative,” I manage, and he actually gives a short, breathy laugh at that. He buries his face in my neck again, and god knows how long we stand in the hallway but it’s not enough still. I don’t know that the six months that we have to incubate this confession will ever be enough.

That’s the difference between the angel and me.

I want desperately to save Marco.

I also know that I can’t.


	6. Hysteria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco is worth every single one of the days I spend with him, but I cannot turn a blind eye to his growing darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> special thanks to tumblr user [gonnagetnaked](http://gonnagetnaked.tumblr.com)

After a long time spent wrapped around each other in the sickly fluorescent light of the hallway, Marco pulls away from me and peels one of my hands out of the now-sweaty, wrinkled grip I’d had on his shirt. He doesn’t care. He just threads his fingers through mine and pulls me into his apartment. I make no move to resist him.

Pausing briefly to save whatever he’d been working on, Marco tugs me over to the couch, and when he sits I plop down close next to him. I let him maneuver my arm around his neck so that he can lean his head against my shoulder. My arm fits perfectly there, our fingers still twined against his broad chest.

We sit in silence for a while, the sun setting and the room growing dark, but it doesn’t grow heavy or awkward, even given the suddenness of our weird feelings explosion. It just _is_. It’s comfortable, and it’s right, and that’s more than enough for the both of us.

He doesn’t object when I pull my hat off his head and toss it onto the couch next to him so that I can bury my face in his hair. He smells nice. His shampoo, the light sweat from wearing a damn hat on the brink of summer, whatever it is. It’s nice. His fingers fit so well between mine, too, and they’re warm and not clammy or rough. His free hand wriggles between my back and the couch and comes to rest on my hip. 

“I like being near you, Jean,” he says quietly after a long while. I thought he’d fallen asleep, the way he breathes so evenly. His fingers squeeze mine, sending a rush of pins and needles through long-numb joints, before his hand falls to his lap. I watch him flex his wrist. His hand must have been asleep too. “I feel less alone with you.”

I smile a little, reaching up to play with the soft hair by his ear. “Is it possibly because you’re _not_ alone?”

“No, ’s more than that,” comes the sleepy, mumbled reply. “You know what it’s like to stand in a room full of people and still be lonely, right?”

“’Course.”

“Mhm.” 

Even though his glasses are digging into my collarbone, and even though my arm is falling completely asleep with his weight on it, I don’t move him until I remember that he has work tomorrow morning and probably shouldn’t sleep sitting up on the couch. Sore backs and all that.

I’m very tempted to watch him sleep, but I’m really not trying to be creepier than I already have been for months, so I tuck him into his bed and set his alarm for him. Boy sleeps like the dead, swear to god he didn’t even wake up when he shuffled across the room to collapse face-first in the sheets.

“Hey, Marco,” I say, and he gives me this breathy, sleepy whine in response. “I’m gonna go back to mine, okay?” 

After pulling his glasses off his face and slamming them on the bedside table just this side of violent, he rolls onto his side and squints up at me as I tug his mussed blanket over him. “Dinner t’morrow?” God, he’s cute when he’s tired. 

“Sure,” I mumble, and after a moment of slightly frantic consideration, I lean down and press a soft kiss to his barely-stubbly cheek. 

When I pull away, he’s smiling, even if he appears to be knocked the fuck out.

Despite clearly understanding the concept of needing time to sort oneself out, had he asked me to stay tonight, I would’ve without hesitation. I can’t really say that I’m a hundred percent sure what I’m allowed to do while he’s reorganizing. Guess I’ll just roll with whatever he gives me. 

The microwave tells me it’s in the neighborhood of three in the morning when I close his door and open mine again. I’ve been gone for longer than a handful of hours.

Shockingly, Eren doesn’t look pissed. He’s not mad, he’s not frustrated, he’s not pacing or snarking or really doing anything other than snoring on the couch. Armin appears to have gone home.

I immediately move for my guitar so I can play quietly and consider the last day or so. Let it process or some shit.

Eren pokes me out of a surprisingly sound doze before it’s even terribly light out. I snort up at him, hands resting on my guitar, and he sniffs at me and shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Ngrh.”

“C’mon,” he says, scratching the back of his head as he looks out the window. “I’m bored and awake. You don’t need sleep anyway.”

\--

We end up by the river, right about where Marco and I had eaten ice cream on his birthday. It’s cold, my breath frosting the air, and thick six am fog rolls off the calm water and over the rocky banks. For a while, we just stand by the water, Eren quietly considering and me freezing my balls off and checking for people.

I start skipping rocks through the mist to warm my bones. He joins me and sucks at it.

After a while, I crack. “You gonna flip out at me?”

Arching an eyebrow, he looks at me for a second before his eyes move back to his loudly sinking rocks. “Why should I?”

“Never said you should,” I mumble, flicking a fairly successful rock. One can only do so much on a river. “Just asked if you were gonna.”

“Don’t think so.”

He ignores me staring at him. I basically took Armin’s advice and shoved it, and Eren’s not even pissy about it. Color me genuinely surprised.

I can tell that he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, though, and if we’re being honest I don’t either. I don’t like the possibility that that story has any application to me or Marco. If I have any luck left to me, it’ll go toward making sure that shit’s nothing more than a scary bedtime story.

The sun starts to rise, finally boiling off the mist, and I skip one last stone before I turn back to Eren, who’s nibbling at the end of his dumb key and staring out into space.

“What is that thing, anyway?” He blinks at me when I ask, so I gesture at his key. Six months, and he’s never said a word about it.

Another long silence fills the air between us. Just when I’m about to apologize, to let him drop it, having clearly opened a can of worms, he sighs and looks down at it. He twirls it in his fingers, twisting the leather strap it hangs by, then flicks his gaze back up to me.

“My unfinished business.”

I frown. How can Death have unfinished business? 

Before I can open my mouth to ask, he lets it fall back against his shirt, and the sound of it hitting his sternum carries a weight impossibly heavier than the thin metal that caused it.

\--

When Marco comes to collect me for dinner that night, he looks… shy. It’s cute. I follow him into his apartment, sans my guitar for now, and the shyness falls away again as I help him make dinner. 

As we’re eating, our knees brush under his little table. Neither of us pull away.

“Hey, Jean,” he says after I’ve finished the dishes and he’s begun spreading out his work from the day. “What’re you doing Friday?” I blink at him as I dry my hands, leaning my hip against the counter. “It’s the Fourth. You going to see any fireworks?”

My gaze falls to the faded, flowery pattern of the dish towel.

Fireworks were the last thing I saw before I died. They were so beautiful. They were shining and bright and blurry in my fading vision, and even though the sounds of the joyous new year had exploded right along with their echoing canon fire, all I could hear was the sound of my own bloody bubbling gasps.

“J-Jean, hey—”

I startle a little when he’s suddenly in front of me, leaning into my space to catch my stare. My sinuses are burning, my vision swimming. God fucking dammit. I wipe at my eyes quickly and probably harder than necessary. Fuck.

“I-it’s nothing,” I mumble, more than a little pissed at myself. Smooth, Jean, really smooth.

His hands come up gently, though, and they rest on my face. I look up at him. I hope my face isn’t red. His thumbs run over my cheekbones, his eyes flicking between mine, and the smile he gives me _really_ makes me want to kiss him.

“You okay?”

I sniff and toss his towel on the counter, doing my best to look Tough and Manly and probably just looking like a grouch. The expression makes him laugh. I give him a lopsided smile in return, and he doesn’t ask me about it again, instead wanting to know if I feel like watching something.

We’ve long since established that horror movies and slasher flicks are off-limits. He probably thinks I’m scared of the dark or something. I just don’t know how much I can take them these days, and the absolute last thing I ever want to do is have a panic attack in front of him. Panic is half of his game as an anxiety therapist, I know that, but that doesn’t mean he has to see my ass panicking in his kitchen while he’s meant to be unwinding and shit.

Not that Marco has an ounce of negative evaluation in him.

We settle on House, which I can tolerate because it makes me laugh and because he fucking loves it. More specifically, he loves Hugh Laurie, which honestly explains how he can possibly be any ounce of attracted to a grumpy motherfucker like me.

Our thighs rest against each other on the couch as we watch, and after a few episodes he reaches over completely casually and twines our fingers together.

It is July 1st, and we have one hundred and eighty-three days left together before my time is up.

\--

Marco had already made plans with Christa to go to a fireworks festival or some shit, and he doesn’t ask me to come or offer to hide in a basement somewhere with me, which I appreciate because my urge to be a greedy fuck might prevent me from declining. 

Christa’s been his best friend for god knows how long. I’m just his weird dead anxious neighbor-slash-boyfriend-candidate. If I’m lucky.

I spend the Fourth in limbo instead. No one asks any questions. Trees are only so exciting, though, even ones than shine like the night sky, and Eren less-than-artfully dodges every question I have about his version of our surroundings, so eventually we pass through a door illogically and lopsidedly lodged in the thick trunk that leads to Armin’s library. Serious Alice in Wonderland bullshit.

Armin’s not alone, though, and he is the farthest thing from the relaxed, easy-tempered little dude I’d first met.

There’s a girl leaning against the railing of the balcony, thin and blonde, but that’s not who Armin’s talking to. I can’t see that person. The chair hides their form. The girl leans her head back, looking up at the ceiling, before she seems to become aware of us on the ground floor.

Eren’s grinding his teeth. I can fucking _hear_ it.

He doesn’t have the chance to run up the shitty metal stairs, though, because the girl holds out her hand in a gesture that clearly says not to come near.

The way he bristles sets my nerves on edge too, my heart thundering in my chest.

She vaults over the railing, which gives me second-hand vertigo, and her footsteps across the marble are near-silent.

“I want to see her.” I glance at Eren. Wow, not even a greeting.

She stares up at him, her eyes near-ice blue, and sighs. Before she speaks, she looks at me. Something flashes in her stare. Something… uncomfortable. For both of us. The words that leave her lips aren’t for me, but her stare doesn’t leave my face. “She doesn’t remember.”

Eren elbows me out of the way, sharp and hard right in my damn ribs. I feel better without her staring into the bottom of my soul, honestly. “I don’t care.”

“Now isn’t a good time,” she says, her hands stuffed in the pockets of a hoodie that must be too hot for this time of year, no matter where she is. “You know as well as I do that stress makes things—” A jolt pierces my chest when she flicks her gaze back over to me, just for a moment. “—unstable.”

“Stop stressing her out, then,” he growls, crossing his arms. “Is Cairo even that bad?”

“What backwater do they have you in?” Her eyes narrow, searching his face. “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

I know I haven’t. My stomach sinks, though, and I can’t really say why.

Another voice, coming again from the balcony. “Annie, let’s go.” I look up, my eyes falling on a girl leaning over the metal railing, her black hair cut short off of her neck but hanging loose in her eyes. Something about her seems familiar. Can’t place it, though.

The blonde, Annie, stares at us both for half a second longer before she turns on her heel, marches up the stairs, and falls through the floor with the other girl. 

Eren stays put for a moment, long enough to run shaking hands down his face, before he stalks up the stairs to where Armin’s collapsed in his chair. I look around the library for another few minutes before I join them. That whole meeting was strange, it left a strange taste in my mouth. Bitter, familiar. It’s gonna bug me, I know it is, and while Marco’s living his life I have nothing but time to ponder it.

By the time I make it up to the balcony, they’ve finished whatever rushed, whispered conversation they were having, and Eren is paler than I’ve ever seen him. Dull anxiety curls in my gut again.

Armin looks like he hasn’t slept in years, which I imagine he hasn’t, but I doubt it’s ever bothered him before. Eren’s staring at the carpet, slouched in the only other chair. 

It’s a fucking corpse party in here.

I sigh, raking a hand through my hair, and move to the bookshelves. No Nancy Drew, at least.

\--

It’s mid-morning on July 16th, one hundred and sixty-eight days left, when I’m napping again with a smelly old book over my face. Every day that passes makes it harder to keep myself from kissing him. I’ll wait until my soul leaves my body again if I have to, though. However long it takes. 

I have to admit that I have absolutely memorized the tiny movement of his tongue wetting his lips and the barest shine of his teeth that he graces me with right before he cracks some joke at my expense. It plays in my mind when I’m spaced out, tinting my scattered daydreams warm and sweet.

His right front tooth is fake, by the way. A cap. Marching band incident in high school. Tuba mouthpiece knocked the tooth straight out of his face. He says it didn’t hurt, but I have a hard time believing it.

Eren jabs me in the ribs, just under the lingering, raised scar, jolting me out of the millionth replay of Marco’s smile. Eren’s pale again, his brow furrowed with worry. The expression wakes me up almost immediately and without my usual complaint of having to see his mug before I’ve had a proper thought.

“You need to see something.”

I doubt very much that I’ll like it. I stand up anyway, though, putting my book to the side and holding out my wrist. Eren yanks, and we fall, and once my head’s stopped spinning and my brain clears, I find myself in a dark, cluttered basement apartment.

_“—Haven’t you been watching the news?!_ It’s hopeless, it’s everywhere already, we’re too late, too late, too late…”

The man at the desk is a silhouette in the weak lamplight, speaking in agitated sobs, and I can’t hear his words anymore because the violently trembling gun pressed to his temple makes my blood pressure spike and my chest hurt and the world turn to thunder and lightning.

I’m moving before I think twice about it.

My fingers curl around the barrel of the gun. My grip is sweaty, but his is more so. I yank. It comes loose. The TV flashes desert-colored explosions on the horrible snotty face he turns to me. 

I know this guy.

Dazz Finster. Marco’s agoraphobic patient, DF.

Thunder. I hold the gun out of his reach. Lightning, bright again from the TV blaring urgent headlines that I lack the power to read or comprehend.

He’s screaming violence at me.

I don’t hear him.

I’m hyperventilating.

His fists flail in punches that land painlessly on my chest, my ribs, my arms.

I can’t tolerate that face anymore, sopping wet and screaming, and I pray to god that I never once looked this fucking pathetic in the middle of a panic attack.

I hope I don’t look like this right now.

My hand is still gripping slippery gunmetal, so I drop it and give him a good left hook to the temple.

He drops, but even with the free air I breathe now, the silence is still rising like water flooding my tiny cage.

The phone on his desk is talking. I stumble over to it, squinting down at the bare hieroglyphics sprawled across the screen that somehow resemble Marco’s name.

The flick of his tongue. The curl of his smile. 

Marco, Marco, his voice is soft and soothing, telling me we’ll work through it and that he’s calling the police for me—

Oh. Shit. Not for me, for his patient Dazz that was just trying to kill himself.

When I turn, the world spins violently without me, still twisted in my panic, but I can clearly make out the green hell in Eren’s eyes right in front of me.

He grabs me. Someone pounds at the door.

We fall.

\--

It’s dark where we are but for the single ray of sunshine that falls on a lame door standing improbably in a mountain of splintered debris. Sharp wood jabs out at every angle, threatening to catch my arm or my elbow or my eye.

Numbness spreads over me.

Eren slams me against the door. It’s the only place he can manhandle me without impaling me and destroying my body.

“—Keep _doing_ this, Jean, you keep ignoring our warnings! Subtlety never was your strong point, so let me _spell it out for you._ ” I blink at him. He’s so mad, so stressed, his nostrils flaring. “That guy, Dazz? He was supposed to blow his fucking brains out. He was supposed to _die, Jean,_ and once again you’re the fucking hero.”

My lips shake. Sinuses burn. Drumming thunder.

“That thing that you saw, that is what _rot_ looks like. _Things left to wander here rot._ We’re going to have to deal with Dazz again when he shows up grey and brainless somewhere in the parish, and it will happen _soon,_ because even if you saved him you can’t stop it now.”

He doesn’t have to tell me the point to this story. It isn’t his annoyance.

He’s crying.

I am too, I think.

The thunder dulls when he lets go of my shirt and takes a step back to rake his fingers through his hair. My knees fail me. I slide slowly down the wood to the dirt floor. 

After a while, Eren crouches in front of me, his eyes so bright and bloodshot. The contrast makes his green a thousand times brighter. He peers at me over his forearms, folded atop his bent knees, his gaze so full of pain that it knocks the breath out of me.

When he speaks, his voice shakes and his words come slowly. 

“Whether that shit about angels and demons is true or not, Marco is still damned. He doesn’t belong here, Jean. Bad things are coming for him.” Fresh tears soak his face. He takes a mouthful of his loose sleeve in his teeth. It muffles his words. “He will die.”

A sob wrenches out of me. My shirt is soaked, sticking to my chest.

“He will turn. If you don’t reap him, he will hurt people, and god knows when I’ll come back after you.”

My teeth grit so hard my head hurts. I don’t bother to fight the crying now. My body heaves with the force of my weeping.

His hand grips his hair tightly, so tightly, his body shaking as I gasp for air and find only dust and salt.

“Take him.”

My eyes squeeze shut. 

The tiniest flash of teeth between Marco’s soft lips.

“Take him while you can, or someone who doesn’t love him will cut him down like he never mattered at all.”

I bury my face in my dirty hands, and I am overcome.

\--

When I knock on his door later, I’m almost surprised to find Marco home, and his face is pale.

No need to ask questions. I pull him to me, and he walks backward, closing his apartment door behind me.

I don’t have to ask him what happened, but I do anyway, because the way he shakes in my arms is fucking breaking me in half. Even though I’d asked, I hadn’t expected him to tell me. He does, though, and I’m glad he gets it off his chest because I don’t know if I could bear the way he conceals his guilt and his worries and his sadness about this and god knows what else.

“A client called me today.” He curls into me, his head resting on my chest. We’re clinging tight to each other on the bed, my face buried in his soft, mussed hair, which stands up in cowlicks from how many times he must have run his fingers through it today. “He was panicking, worse than I’ve ever seen him. I got this really bad feeling, from how hard he was crying and how I couldn’t reach him, so I had Christa call 911 to send someone to his apartment.” 

I run my hand up and down his back, likely wrinkling the nice fabric of his shirt, but it soothes him. He’s still shaking badly.

“They said someone had already stopped him. He was out cold on the floor.” His breath hitches. Voice wavering, he breathes, “Th-there was a l-loaded gun near him.”

He breaks, sobbing into my chest, so I roll to him and I wrap myself around him and I murmur against his ear how brave he is, how kind and incredible and beautiful while he gasps into my chest. I let him.

I think I spent every tear I’ve ever had in Eren’s broken wooden room.

Marco feels so intensely, but he keeps it hidden under this façade of calm that is impossible for me to describe, let alone understand. He’s wrecked. He’s broken and tiny, and I gather all of his pieces to my splintered shards and pile us together on the bed so that when his wounds heal and mine scab over, maybe we’ll knit back into the single soul we were meant to be.

I love Marco.

I have always loved him, and I will love him still when I clutch his soul tightly to mine and we fall together into the dark.

Maybe one day I’ll tell him. I have my pick of one hundred and sixty-seven days to do so.

\--

His boss gives Marco the rest of the week off, and he’s hard-pressed to accept it. He does, though, and I am glad.

I don’t leave his side for days. 

We lay in bed together, limbs twined around each other’s, our hands tracing imaginary stars through his cobwebbed ceiling. We tell each other stories and fables, tales from our childhoods. I tell him about Kansas, he tells me about accidentally starting a food fight on his first day at his new school after moving to Portland from Colorado. I tell him about the two girlfriends I ever had, our relationships cold and decorative, and he tells me about how Bert had gently lured him out of the closet and with tender fingers and soft murmurs allowed Marco to accept himself.

Their relationship was brief, he tells me with careful eyes. Brief, and passionate like a sun gone supernova, and in the end it was near meaningless to the both of them.

It’s easy to hold his gaze, even this close, his gold-flecked eyes flicking again between mine the way they do when he’s concerned. When I lean closer to him, our noses touch, and our eyes remain linked, searching.

The shift of my chin rubs us together. I’m still waiting for him, still holding this microscopic space between us.

He takes the molecule of distance from me and gives me instead his entire being.

The way his lips press against mine is sweet, gentle, exactly like I’d imagined and infinitely, impossibly different. 

A moment, both of us careful, testing, breaths held quiet in our drumming chests, before his eyes slide shut in a perfect flutter and he tilts his head to give me more of him. I hope I’m filling his chest the same warm, overwhelming way he fills mine.

The way he holds me reminds me of the time I’d held him months ago, the light of his being winding perfect between my fingers and soothing me. 

When we’re pressed together like this, when his chest is strong against mine and his arms are wrapped around my shoulders to bring me further into him, I can feel the sweet thrum of his soul bright and hopeful against my chest. I can feel the waxing force of his personality, his strength, his overwhelming compassion beating strong against me, and if I ever feel that tempo fade beneath my fingers…

Minutes and hours consume the dragging daylight and golden harvest moons until Sunday night (July 20th, one hundred and sixty-four—) finds him curled up against me, my arm resting over his waist and my nose buried in the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. I’d been dozing. He always smells so nice, so good. 

I feel him shift against me, wriggling and turning in my loose grip until his forehead is pressed against mine. My eyes flutter open. His glasses rest low on his nose, his still-sleepy eyes not yet adjusted to waking from our brief, still slumber.

“Hey, Jean,” he murmurs, his legs tangling with mine under the blanket. 

“Mm?”

He doesn’t speak right away, his eyes tracing the curve of my lips until I shift forward just enough to press them against his. A soft, shaky sigh, the tremors those of contentment, not fear or anxiety. I can tell, because my palm pressed against his chest registers the even drumming of his heart.

“Thank you,” he says after a few more kisses, or a few dozen.

Blinking up at him, I pull back just enough to be able to take in his sleep-pale face, the color returning to his cheeks and overshooting into a pretty flush. The way he sheepishly grows warmer brings a smile to my lips.

“D’you think…” He pauses to clear his throat, eyes flicking downward, then back to mine. “Do you wanna give it a go?” The grin that creeps over my face is impossible to fight, so I don’t try, and my heart pounds when he returns it.

“You mean, uh.” My voice cracks, so I lick my lips and swallow before I gesture between us. He nods, biting his lip. I consider him for a few moments, reaching up to run my thumb over his cheek, then mumble, “Yeah. I’d like that.”

“Alright.” He runs his hand through his hair, the flush deepening. “Then, ah. Hi there, boyfriend.”

I snort. He’s such a damn dork. “Hi, boyfriend.”

We kiss again, and some more, unwilling to part and having no excuse to, and it occurs to me that I haven’t felt this alive in a long time.

\--

When his breath evens out deep and constant, his eyes flicking behind his eyelids in a way that can only be dreams, I just watch him. Creepy, yeah. I know. 

The darkness will come for us at the end of the year. I’m going to take with me every part of him that I can, every laugh, every smile, every second that my eyes spend memorizing the celestial expanse dotting patterns and shapes across his forehead, down his nose, everywhere. Everything. 

“We need to talk,” whispered harsh in my ear jolts me out of my daydreams, slamming my heart up into my mouth and setting my vision whirling.

I look over my shoulder at the wide, wild blue eyes staring at me from the edge of the bed.

“A-Armin?”

What the fuck.

I peel my body away from Marco’s, not worried about waking him up. When he’s out, he’s fucking out.

The step from the bed to the floor is much longer than I’d anticipated. By about twenty thousand goddamn leagues. 

The joke is cheap, being as I’m surrounded by water and falling faster than should be possible. Salt fills my mouth and blocks my breath, and layers of the ocean slam past me like the world around a falling elevator.

I land on my ass. It sucks. A lot.

Groaning, I flop back against the ocean floor. It’s dark, the water murky around me. Every documentary I’ve ever watched on the horrors in the undiscovered depths is suddenly coming back to me in crystal-clear precision. There’s some scary shit in the dark, man. I’m wondering how safe my precious corpse is down here.

“Jean,” comes a thick, faded whisper. My eyes flash back open, my body and my mind somehow unaffected by the pressure and the temperature and the damn salt. I lean my head up until I find Armin, who gestures me over from under a weird, pulsating rock formation. I feel like a damn crab.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Armin looks around us, silently watching a weird eel-type thing flash brilliant blue lights at us before it leaves the alcove.

“It’s not safe. We have to be careful.”

My stomach sinks. I watch him, his eyes wide and moving fast, the kind of fast controlled less by paranoia and more by thoughts at speeds that would brutalize a normal human’s feeble brain. He’s thinking. I can practically see the smoke.

“Armin,” I say quietly, stupidly quiet given the dampening of the ocean water, and I reach out to grab his shoulders and try to shake him back onto the same plane as me. “Hey, Armin, you with me?”

He nods, but he’s still searching.

“ _The Purge,_ Jean, that chapter you read.” My mouth goes dry. I wonder if I can swim to the surface, away from this conversation. “I was wrong.”

Wait. Wait, what?

“I found another text from that place. They were both here. It’s weird, I didn’t have to search for them, they were just…” He swallows, looking down at his hands, then up at me. “I found them in my library. During my archiving. Two of them, just two in that language.”

I stare, trying to keep up, trying to follow his every shaking word. 

“I was wrong. I translated that chapter wrong. I’d thought that story was out of place,” he breathes, the water heavy around us. “It didn’t make sense to me, how in the middle of a creation story a demon that was out of place purely by chance wiped half the earth when the rest of the story was so perfectly puzzled together, you know?” He looks nervous, so nervous, gaze twitching as he cracks his knuckles. “Everything meticulously in its place, pinned down to perfection, and then a sudden chance slip of free will destroys everything?”

My heart’s pounding.

“The thing is, there was another chapter earlier on that I didn’t understand too well. Not wrong, just… it didn’t translate well, if you know what I mean.” He leans closer. “It’s about their god, I thought. But I found out that it’s not a god. It’s a builder.”

I squint at him. A fish rolls by, deformed and accommodated to the hellish depths that spawned it, and Armin bites his lip and watches it unblinking until it’s out of earshot. That’s a maddening thought.

“They called this being the Architect.” He rakes his fingers through his unkempt hair. “The Architect planned everything, from the moment of the universe’s inception until whenever that place ended. If it even has. Everything, _everything,_ every breath that every man on earth took.” He stares at me, growing fidgety as it appears I don’t follow, and when his patience breaks he grabs my shirt and drags me close so he can breathe into my ear, water muffling his shaking voice.

_“Including the angel’s treason.”_

Time stops.

“The battle between the humans enveloped the angels and demons too and whipped their anger into a frenzy. The war would have destroyed everything if not for the demon’s madness.” There’s a desperation, a horror to his whispers. “It was a culling.”

I grip his shoulders again and pull him back enough that I can stare into his eyes, bloodshot and fearful. “What are you saying, Armin?” I search his gaze, desperate for a lie. “What are you telling me? That saving him was part of some plan? That’s insane!”

The way he looks at me now, his pity and his exhaustion force my eyes away from his. “Jean, you’re telling an immortal librarian at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that the idea of a divine plan is insane.”

… Fair point.

I shake it off and look back up at him. “You can’t—” Denial is brewing. “You can’t be telling me that Marco’s going to cause the apocalypse.”

He shakes his head, thank god, and reaches up to grab my wrists. “I can’t say for sure. There’s no way to know. I’m just telling you to be careful.”

With a sigh, I pull a hand back to dig the heel of my palm into my eye. There’s no way. Think, think… I have to find a way to get him out of this. I can’t let Marco fall into madness and, and… 

The memory of his face as he tells me he’s been so fucked up since New Year’s fills my mind, brutal in its softness.

My eyes open again, flicking between Armin’s, who’s watching the wheels turn. The memory from the hallway fades into the feel of Marco’s hair between my fingers, the rumble of his sleepy voice telling me that he likes being near me. The feel of his lips against mine. The shine to his eyes when he called me his boyfriend.

I can’t save Marco, not forever. That thought is absolutely drilled into my skull. And I can’t just fade out of time and let someone who doesn’t know how perfect Marco is take his soul away.

But I can give him as much time as I have, and I can prevent this fate that may not even be his. It _can’t_ be his, not the way he is now.

Armin’s tilting his head at me, the pity spreading from his eyes down his face like a mask, but I don’t have time for his crap. I talk over his budding protests and say firmly, “He isn’t that. I didn’t even have a reason to save him! I was just _scared_. And besides, it’s just a story, and there are seven billion humans on earth. He can’t be the only thing out of place on this whole fucking planet of things that are wrong. Not Marco.”

He grabs my cheeks in his hands, giving my head a little shake. “Jean! It’s just a theory. That’s all it is. All I’m saying is pay attention, and don’t let your love for him mask what he is. You’re right. I have a hard time believing this too, trust me.” My brow furrows, but he continues. “But we cannot and must not rule it out.”

After I while, I give a hesitant nod, my eyes anywhere but his. “Why are you telling me this?”

He sighs, pulling his hands back to rake his fingers through his bangs. “Because I hate the idea of Marco becoming the agent of the downfall just as much as you do.” I look up at him again. “Probably even more so.”

When I open my mouth to ask how long he’s been watching us, he reaches out to cover my eyes, and when his hands fall away I’m back in the bed. Shaky, disoriented, sweaty. I look around, scanning for the outline of his shadow anywhere around me, but there’s only Marco lying beside me.

For longer than I can keep track of, I watch shadows move across the ceiling and let my frantic what-ifs fade into a dull, anxious buzz. After a while, Marco’s warmth and soft breaths lull me into fitful slumber.

\--

Music, soft and tinkling. I can see flashes of light outside my eyelids. Lightning.

I grit my teeth, but the thunder doesn’t come.

After a while, I grow restless, so I let my eyelids peel open to regard the foreign landscape I’m standing in.

The world is on fire, the pouring rain snapping and smoking in the conflagration. Screams echo around me, the roaring flames nearly drowning out the sounds of the dying, the dead, the damned, and I reach up to grip my head tight. I squeeze, attempting to crush this nightmare out of existence.

It’s the first time I’ve really dreamed so far. 

I didn’t miss them.

My breath escapes in a slow, ragged sob, my brain ticking down the clock and grasping for my coping mechanisms.

The rain has already drenched me to the bone, near icy, my body out of reach of the heat that should be boiling off the downpour into vapor all around me.

Thick steps rattle the ground under me, monstrous and reverberating, the shocks so severe that I’m knocked to my hands and knees before they even begin to approach me. I’m scuttling. Need to hide, need to hide, it’s coming and all the shelter is ablaze and there’s nowhere to hide—

Lightning again. It’s blinding, unnaturally white, and like a flashbang at a riot it renders me useless and breathless until my eyes recover from the shock.

The footsteps continue. I’m under something, something that stinks like burning flotsam and rains embers onto my bare forearms, my neck.

It _hurts._

Is this really a dream? 

Did I wake up too late, too deep in the carefully programmed purge to save him?

My vision recovers enough to squint into the blazing darkness, my ears ring loud enough to jolt my body like electroshock, my hair curling from the heat of my withering shelter. I roll out from under it just in time for it to shriek, groan, and collapse, flopping gracelessly onto my back. The sky is black. No stars. No clouds. No moon. 

When I squint, I can make out the void that lies nestled between Eren’s feral jawbones stretching endless above me. It is muted by the flames.

A figure leans over me. It’s huge, _vast,_ wide and shadowed, blank white eyes peering out of swirling darkness. _Monstrous._ I sob, my teeth digging into my lip and shredding open a dry break. Pain. My mouth fills with the taste of metal.

The shade _reeks._

It’s a fucking unholy smell, wrought up from Hell itself and bred to drip invisible onto my face and drive my body mad with the animal urge to go to run to leave leave run _run—_

The colossus is _wrong,_ it smells fucking _wrong and it won’t leave me alone—_

It blinks. Slowly, slower than any being has time to process. It stinks, it’s putrid, my sinuses are burning and tears stream down my face and if this stench had a foot it’d be stepping on my skull and crushing me to _pieces,_ please leave me _alone, please—_

Done blinking, its blank eyes open again, and when its gaze leaves my face I am free of the crushing pressure snapping my ribs into splinters like plastic.

I can breathe again.

I’d been choking.

Coughing, gagging, I roll onto my stomach and puke, the same feeble reaction to the horror raking my organs out of my chest cavity and splaying my innards out for me to see as always. Puking.

Sobbing, too. Weak, retching breaths, pulling in not air but rot and smoke and embers.

Lightning. I’m blind again. 

The silence was risen a while ago. I’ve been panicking this whole time. I’ve been having a panic attack. I’m having one right now, right here in the street where my eyes are blown out bloody and my body is shredded and my brain knows only the feeling of horrible, unnatural, _dead_ things crowding around me.

I’m dying.

I’m dying, I know I’m dying, this is far beyond going crazy or being lost because I am _dying_ and I won’t be able to save Marco, Marco, _Marco will fall—_

My limbs are flailing, asphalt ripping apart my paper skin, broken arms and legs hauling me off the street and setting me sprinting after the fermenting putrefaction shaking the foundations of the earth as it thunders down the street. 

The pounding jolts of my footsteps over the concrete forces adrenaline-fueled focus into my skull, my vision tunneled so that the only thing in my mind is the shade lumbering dark and hideous up the winding road, out of the town center, up the hill toward the crumbling hospital.

Tense. Every muscle is tense and spastic, my jaw clenched so tight that one of my back teeth cracks with a quaking impossible _snap,_ but I don’t have time. Running. I’m running, and my legs burn from the effort but I can’t stop now. I can’t.

The void swirls above the hospital. Trost behind me is ablaze, my shadow thrown a mile ahead of me and jolting on the hill, but the further I get from the inferno the louder the hollow damned become.

The rot fiend shrinks and packs itself between the wide double doors of the ambulance bay. When I catch up, I don’t stop.

I crash through the plate glass.

It hurts, my shoulder dislocated and my face shredded open like road rash, and I’m blind in my left eye but I don’t stop.

It’s dark here.

I sniff, I sample the air in desperate, _whooshing_ snorts, but the fetid, piercing stink is gone now.

Unwillingly, I skid to an unsteady stop, looking around for it. I try to feel the air, searching for that imbalance, that horrifying gaping wound in the fabric of reality, but it is well and truly gone.

The hospital is silent around me.

I stagger sideways into a wall, moving to press my face into my hand, but the immense pain that radiates from my fucked face stops the motion quickly. I’m still blind. I think I really fucking lost an eye.

An emergency light down the hall snaps briefly, sparks raining slow like snowflakes, but it dies out again quickly.

What am I doing? Where am I?

I’d gotten so swept up in the panic, I’d forgotten entirely that I’m not even in reality anymore. I’m in some other place, some other dimension where corpse-stinking titans roam through burning, screaming towns. This isn’t Trost, and Marco isn’t here, and I’m probably not here either.

I stand up. My shoulder feels lighter, less stupid. I can see out of my left eye, although the vision is just a blur of a blur smeared over with cheap grey paint.

A dream.

So why the fuck does it hurt so much?

I rake a hand through my hair and look around me, looking for signs of life or tears in reality. I’d like to wormhole the fuck back to my own world, where everything is shitty as hell but not on quite this scale.

Papers litter the hallway, waiting to betray my awkward, leaning steps and send me tumbling onto my incredibly sore tailbone.

For some reason I don’t really want to think about, I walk past the nurse stations and the phones and the closets, taking a route up the halls I remember better than I should until I come to Marco’s old room.

I can’t say I was expecting to find him there.

Let alone like… like this.

This is gonna sound like bullshit, and I’m pretty sure I’m not high, but my Marco is a _fucking satyr in this world._

My fucking boyfriend is Mr. Fucking Tumnus. Shoot me. Right now. This is bullshit. Fucking stupid. I hate everything, I just want to go the fuck home and never ever think about this goddamn hallucination again, because this is the most absurd nonsensical _bullshit_ I have ever seen.

Must be a dream.

It’s not mine, though. My head is killing me enough to fucking know that.

I squint.

Is it… is it Marco’s?

I knock with my functional hand. My good left is still being a douche at my side.

Marco looks up at me, one branching antler arching high above his soft black hair, the other cracked and sharp down near where it bursts from his skull.

His eyes are staunch black. No white, no brown, no gold. Just black like tar. Pinpoints of red light shining behind them allow me to watch him drag his sleepy gaze up my incredibly fucked-up body. It occurs to me that I’m dripping. From several places. Blood.

Oh well.

“Jean…?”

I blink at him, my one usable eye watching him analyze me. The other one is still doing… whatever it is fucking punctured eyeballs do.

My voice cracks harshly, gravelly in my throat, but I don’t fucking bother trying to clear it out. “Hi, boyfriend.”

Too suddenly for me to anticipate, he stands and… ugh oh my god he fucking _clops_ over to me on cloven hooves. This is all so fucking bizarre, so creepy. I’m wondering if I somehow took shrooms before I went to sleep, because first I got a boyfriend, then I was the Little Goddamn Fucking Mermaid, and now I’m in love with Mr. Goddamn Fucking Tumnus, and if Marco didn’t look so concerned I would be laughing myself stupid.

Shrooms. Gotta be fucking shrooms, this is absolutely insane. Or LSD, acid, bath salts… anything.

“God, Jean, you look like you got hit by a car—”

I stare up at him and carefully do not remind him that he is a fucking goat. I’m just overwhelmed to the point where I can’t feel anything anymore.

The broken antler sparks, which allows me to relearn the emotion of trepidation, and thank god I blink when I do because the flash that goes off outside of my dark little world would have blinded me. As it is, it’s so bright and violent that it crackles in the air, all of my hairs standing on end and sparking static, and the arc it travels in burns into my retina even with how hard I’m squeezing my eyes shut.

Jesus.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, moving back a step. “I don’t know how to stop it…”

“Does it hurt?”

A pause. “I suppose it does, yeah.”

It’s Marco’s dream.

I haven’t dreamed in months, but there’s no fucking way I ever tripped balls this bad. What’s happening in Marco’s head that would breed _this_ disaster to haunt his nightmares? What’s been going on inside of him that would birth such a mad world as this?

Squinting my eyes open, his halo of static-risen hair and lightning after-image curls dark in my vision no matter where I look. His black eyes trace the chipped, filthy floor tiles as he sucks on his lip in an incredibly familiar gesture that warms me to him.

Even if this is the kind of nightmare that drives people insane, he’s still my Marco. My boyfriend.

My goat boyfriend.

I groan and press a hand to the intact side of my face, collecting myself, before I move to him and slide my hands into his. Our fingers twine easily. I look over his face, my head tilted so my good eye takes in more of him.

Yeah, definitely my Marco, even with the black X-Files eyes.

“Hey,” I murmur, my hands squeezing his. “You okay?”

He sighs, his head dropping. I dodge one of the pointy ends of his intact antler. He looks back up at me then, though, and the way the circles under his eyes are dark and the way his brow furrows… he feels guilty about something, upset. Lonely.

I can do lonely.

Smiling gently, I reach up to him as I move against him, his bare chest warm against mine. He leans his face into my hand with a deep sigh, moving to press little kisses along my filthy palm before he nuzzles his cheek into it.

“Do you think I can make it, Jean?”

Blinking, I frown slightly and tilt my head to catch his gaze.

“I mean…” I wait. My heart picks up a little. “I just mean that my mind’s a weird place lately, you know? It has been. Ever since New Year’s.” His eyes widen in a way that kicks the breath right out of me. Black all around, no white—“I can’t think about it, about… about the water—”

I should’ve stopped him from uttering the word.

Like a busted water main flooding a subway tunnel.

As we’re wiped away, I cling to him, watching his terrified face try to stop this, try to stop the madness, rooms and stations and supplies whipping by us in the rapids. A sharp turn, a slide, my back cracks into a wall and Marco crashes into me, his weight crushing, then we’re swept away down, down down down forever until the water spits us out in a fucking freezing cold steel and tile room that must be dug a mile into the hill. I flop like a goddamn fish, trying to stand, and Marco’s shivering on the floor.

It’s a punch in the sinuses with flaming brass knuckles.

_Wrong._

The water drains through rusted, red-tinged grates in the floor, my eyes are watering and burning, my stomach is heaving from the _stench,_ and everything is so wrong, so wrong, _so wrong—_

Someone’s standing in front of the wall of square metal doors, identical to the one Hanji had pulled my chilled corpse from.

Not a rotten shadow, not even that much larger than average.

Just a dude.

He stands there, swaying slightly, his feet unsteady beneath him and our presence completely unnoticed by him.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t think around the smell working its way into my brain and shutting off all the lights—I just wanna hide—

The branch. The branch! Do I have it? My hands flail at my pockets. Ouch.

_I have it._

“Marco,” I whisper, looking over at him as he scrabbles awkwardly to his… feet. “Marco, hide, okay?”

My hand curls around the stick in my back pocket, thorns sliding between my probably-broken fingers, but Marco’s not listening. He’s… what is he doing?

His arms are crossed over his chest like he’s cold, the shiver supporting the theory, but the way all the color drains from his face and leaves him deathly pale makes my guts twist around themselves.

“Again? … B-Bertholdt…”

My eyes widen, bugging out of my head, and my gaze flicks between the two of them. I’m—

What?

Bertholdt doesn’t listen to Marco, doesn’t acknowledge his shaky plea.

He spreads his arms wide, though, and simultaneously every fucking half-ton metal door slams open in a cacophony that drives my sore head straight into a fucking pounding migraine. Metal on metal, whispering and static and thunder, my anxiety is piling on top of me—

Bert’s arms drop. He’s dripping. He’s dripping black slime, the stench overwhelming to the point that my eyes fucking cross, my heart slamming against my ribs, and Marco’s crouched and holding his violently shaking hands over his ears, and white noise, white noise—

Something moves. 

In the dark morgue fridges. 

Bert drops.

The world spins, it lightens and burns my eyes and compounds the migraine that sounds like a thunderstorm cracking an inch from every part of me, it hurts it _hurts—_

Silence.

\--

I can’t.

My head feels like it is cracked open, like it’s been struck with an axe.

Static. I’m heaving gasping breaths and sweating bullets, and the bed jostles so forcefully that I’m fucking dumped out of it onto the floor and all I can do is lie there and fucking take it because it hurts so bad I want to scream.

I’m clammy. Slick with sweat.

Marco’s in the bathroom. I hear him puking, I wish I could gather the strength to go fucking rub his back or something, but honestly all of that bullshit kind of just hit me and I’d started sobbing before I could stop myself.

Eren above me. I know that outline.

“Jesus,” he murmurs, and he floats over me to the bathroom to check on Marco.

It’s light. My left eye is still blurred, still greyed out, but my face doesn’t feel as much like cat food. Sunlight shines abusively bright on the wood ceiling, and I’d previously heard birds chirping, but now there’s nothing but silence.

For once, I’m fucking grateful.

Eren struggles over to the bed with Marco, who looks resoundingly passed out, and I watch from the floor while he tucks him in safely, mumbles to him for a while, then floats back over to sit between my sprawled legs.

The floor under me is slick with my sweat. It’s disgusting.

I’m still struggling with heaving gasps, trying to get the world to stop spinning so damn hard. Eren waits.

It takes a while, but eventually I can actually breathe and my head stops hurting and my nose stops burning, so I lean up on my uninjured elbows to stare at Eren.

“Wh-what the _fuck?”_

It’s the only question that makes sense to me.

He shakes his head, raking trembling fingers through his shaggy bangs, and that’s when I notice smears of blood under his nose, on his chin, along his upper lip. Like a nosebleed.

“Eren—”

“Marco won’t remember the dream.”

I just gape at him.

“If you’re okay to move,” he says quietly as he stands, and the way he tries to play casual cannot hide the tremors rocking his limbs from me. “We need to go.”

My stomach sinks. Literally the worst. I have to jump from one hell right to the next.

Marco’s deep, even breathing barely soothes me. How the fuck can he just go straight back to sleep like that? I lean up to peer at him with my good eye over the edge of the bed.

Black hair spreads over his pillow, his cheek smooshed into his mattress, absolute peace on his face.

My chest loosens up just a little.

I stand with Eren’s help, wiping my dripping, cold sweat from my brow and onto my jeans. “Who?”

He doesn’t give me a list.

Instead, he levels me with this gaze, this _pain,_ the anxiety I’d seen in his face at the library and in his broken wooden purgatory evident in the exhaustion lines scoring his skin.

\--

Twelve people at Trost General are dead, and the neon orange signs papering the windows to a locked-down ward announce a quarantine zone initiated due to an unknown infectious pathogen.


	7. Quiet Little Voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is a funny thing, and even if ours is running out, I will stretch our seconds into days to make up for all the years I had to live without this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> special thanks to tumblr user [gonnagetnaked](http://gonnagetnaked.tumblr.com)
> 
> (additionally zoinks i didn't mean for this chapter to end up like this @_@ next chapter will hopefully be up quickly with yannow plot)

Quarantines are nothing like they tell you in movies and on TV. Citizens are kept completely uninformed. Everything is need-to-know, exposed staff are confined to the locked basement ward, and the bodies and tissue samples and patients and files are all kept behind quiet, unobtrusive doors. It’s like once you’ve got _It,_ you cease to exist until _It_ goes away, or until _It_ takes you.

So far, it doesn’t seem anyone’s left the lockdown. Only bumbling hazmat suits taking patient beds down a key-access freight elevator in the dead of night, like it’s ever truly night in these winding hallways with no windows and glaring lights.

These sternly-bolted cover-ups make it very hard to do my job.

Luckily, souls will wander out of their little cages after a while, and even if they’re greyish and slippery by the time Eren and I get them, we can still manage them.

Every time I pick up a pile of writhing slug juice, Eren goes pale and stares down at it, and then his stare falls into blackness.

He hasn’t lost control yet. Still docile, obedient, and I don’t have the heart to rib him about it because he looks more nervous than I do when it’s time for that, which is saying a whole hell of a lot.

I see Marco every day. He’s so strong, and it’s so hard for me to resist asking him how he can possibly tolerate the storm bursting inside of him with a sweet smile and sweeter-tasting lips. 

Even with his boiling madness, even knowing the visages that haunt his nightmares, I cannot and will not keep myself from him. I wonder sometimes if he’ll grow tired of me, but he never seems to. If I’m not already peering into the hallway when he noisily unlocks his door, he knocks on mine and finds me jittering and biting my tongue.

I don’t want him to begin to hate me. I know, I know, it’s really dumb. Why wouldn’t he want to see his boyfriend? And to be honest, he leans over to catch my lips as often as I do his, if not more so, and he’s the one who slides a hand over the back of my neck and pulls me deeper into him, tongue gently seeking mine.

Kissing Marco is a million times better than kissing Eren.

There’s always that lingering, niggling little fear, though. The constant fear of the socially anxious.

How much of me is too much?

I’ve only asked him once if my presence burdens him, and he responded by taking my face gently into his hands, looking me in the eyes, and saying without room for rebuttal, “Absolutely not. If I wanted to be alone for a while, I would have no problem telling you so.” A smile, a tilt of his head. “Do you believe me?”

If he’d noticed the tears in my eyes, he hadn’t said anything, but I felt the burn as I nodded my head and pulled him into me again, and we barely let each other surface for air for hours.

Speaking of my eyes, the left one is still absolutely fucked.

Marco doesn’t say anything, but I think he looks at it and wonders, so my gaze tends to shift nervously sometimes.

\--

“Hey, Eren,” I mumble one rainy day, standing in a field with him. He’s shifting his weight between the balls of his feet, fists curled loosely. Sparring again, on his request. “Can you check out my left eye?”

His guard drops, and he nods, sliding over to me until he’s directly in my space and staring deep through my eye and into my brain.

“Yeah, it’s torn.”

I raise my eyebrows. “What?”

“The goldish part. It’s got some rips in it. Why d’you ask?”

Sighing, I reach up and rub at it. “Can’t really see out of it. It’s blurry, and light hurts… I see things moving, though. Really well. Is this normal?”

“Not that I’ve seen.” He scratches the back of his neck, considering me. “It looked kinda bloody when we went to the hospital last week, right after… you know.”

Of course I know. Trost General’s wave of deaths. I scowl at the weeds between my shoes. “Is it gonna go away?”

“Probably not, dude. You’re not a ti—you’re not invincible.”

I squint at him, catching his shiftiness in my one good eye. He’s getting sloppy with these kinds of slip-ups, and I’m really starting to wonder just how much shit he’s hiding from me. And why.

“Anything else?”

Eren looks again, gaze flicking between my eyes, and then he nods slowly. “It’s not something the living would notice, but the black part shines sometimes. Like a cat.”

“Why the hell wouldn’t the living notice?”

Eren floats to the side and sits on a stump, tying his shaggy hair up in a dumb tiny ponytail. It’s getting longer. “The living don’t notice a lot of things. Things that move in the dark, things that hide in plain sight… you know those things that move through the edges of your vision, and when you look, there’s nothing?”

I nod. I regret asking. He stares up at me.

“That’s the dead moving. It’s only ignorance that keeps the two worlds separate, but they say that once you start noticing them…” He pauses to lick his lips, his gaze unflinching and boring deep into mine. “You don’t ever get to stop.”

I swallow. His words send chills running down my arms and my spine, even in the warm, humid air.

“That eye’s probably gonna be useful to us, you know,” he says, floating to his feet again. 

“Oh goody.” He rolls his eyes at my dryness, moving backwards to his sparring position. I watch his bare toes skim over the tips of the wet grass, leaving barely a ripple. 

“If you can only see movement, it means you’ll be able to see them coming.” He moves back into his stance, fists held between us. “And if you can’t see anything else clearly, then your human mind won’t be able to come up with comfortable lies for why things are moving in the shadows.”

I wish it’d stayed blind.

I rake my fingers through my hair, ruffling it harder than necessary, and at his whistle I ready my scythe again and he comes at me.

It is July 28th, one hundred and fifty-six days left, and I am getting better at using this absurd weapon with every day that passes.

\--

“You know,” Marco says to me, leaning forward. “I realized the other day that I still don’t know your last name. Or your phone number, what your apartment looks like, how many siblings you have…”

It’s hard to feel as hopeless as I do when Marco’s smiling like this. The solitary world we create in his apartment allows me to lose myself in him, allows distraction from my own burden as I try to lighten his, just for the moment. Just for now. I give him a playful smirk and scoot closer.

On this balmy, quiet evening on August 1st, neither of us are paying attention to the quietly-playing news on his TV, which he has taken to turning on after dinner. A visit to a medicated Dazz rattled him enough that he’s begun paying attention. I never do. It’s all bad things in places other than here. 

We’re sitting on his bed in low lamplight, our crossed knees touching now, and his eyes are bright with badly-contained giggles when I gesture him closer. 

I lean in a little further than is absolutely necessary to murmur in his ear, “Can you keep a secret?” The way chills break out down his neck and across his forearms is breathtaking.

“Ooh, I hope you’re a wanted bank robber on the run from the FBI. Public enemy number one?”

That’s almost better than mine. “Close. I’m actually Jean Claude van Damme. I had some work done and now I’m retiring from the public eye to live out my dreams as a busking hermit.”

He leans back and looks almost affronted but for the way the corners of his lips twitch up. “You can’t be a true hermit without a long bushy beard, sir. Unfortunately, you’re still one step away from achieving nirvana.” 

“Aw, come on,” I laugh, patting at my cheeks. I’d shaved earlier, so they’re still pretty smooth. “Beards are itchy for the first like month and a half. Plus, what if it grows out patchy and weird? No one with a patchy beard is enlightened.”

“Mm, good point…” He taps a finger against his lips and feigns thinking for a moment. “I wonder if a big bushy moustache would suffice. I haven’t checked the Rulebook of Enlightened Facial Hair in a while…”

Do not make a moustache ride joke. Don’t do it, Jean, don’t you dare. “Dude, no one rocks just the moustache anymore. It’s weird.”

“Hipsters!” He grins, pleased with his admittedly winning defense. I concede, leaning back on my hands to check him out some more. I doubt I’ll ever tire of it. “But seriously, mystery man, how am I supposed to warn you that the feds are coming for you if I don’t know which Jean the headlines are talking about?”

I shrug, giving him what I’m sure is a maddening smile. “Pick the most interesting one?”

“Ah, so you’re the master sheep thief Jean?”

“Yes.” I attempt to pull a serious face, and I am one hundred percent sure it doesn’t work. “That’s actually what’s in my apartment. Just piles and piles of sheep of all sizes.”

“Mm,” he hums, tilting his head. “That does explain all the bleating I hear from over there. I thought you just enjoyed playing the song of your people at full volume.”

“It does sound better live, doesn’t it?” He _snorts,_ god, and collapses onto his side in a fit of giggles, one of his knees sliding into my lap. I grin at him. He’s so goddamn cute. “It’s Kirschtein.”

He peers up at me from his sheets, a warm smile gracing his lips. “Sounds German.”

“I hope so, considering it’s German.”

“Cute.”

“Ahyuck.” He’s so bad at stifling giggles. “My parents moved here from Bremerhaven when my mom was pregnant with me.”

“Oh yeah? Do you speak any German?”

“What kind of bank-robbing, sheep-snatching, patchy-bearded secret agent would I be if I didn’t?”

“So you’re a secret agent now, huh? Where’s your suit and all your tiny guns?”

A moment of boldness comes over me, so I reach out and trail my knuckles over his calf where it’s still resting on my knee. I’m glad it’s warm enough today that he’d worn shorts. He doesn’t shift away, but I don’t take it any further. “We’ve moved away from the tiny guns. It’s all about the bionic implants now.”

“And the suit?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He laughs, shifting his arm under his head. He hasn’t moved from where we’re touching still. 

“Alright, alright.” He holds up his fingers and counts on them as he says, “So we’ve learned that you’re a criminal of many kinds, possibly an actor, a spy, or a questionably enlightened hermit, definitely a dork—”

“That’s rich—”

“Your last name is Kirschtein, and your apartment is filled with sheep.” He drops his hand again and squints at me. “You have artfully dodged both the phone number and the siblings.”

“I didn’t dodge them,” I laugh, resting my palm on his calf. I hope it’s not sweaty. “I forgot about them! Your line of questioning tends to wander, you know.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says with a shit-eating grin that definitely isn’t sorry. “If it’s better, I will now stare at you until you either answer my questions or distract me.”

Pretending to ponder that, I carefully plan my attack.

My hypothesis is correct; Marco Bodt is extremely ticklish behind the knees. Bonus points, he squeaks like a mouse if you pinch at the very top of his calf when he’s not expecting it, right before he starts punching. I just laugh at him and fend off his flails with my free hand.

 _“Okay_ okay okay!” His face is so red, his hair is a mess, and he’s making definite surrendering gestures. I give, sticking my tongue out at him, and he rolls onto his back to catch his breath, sliding his ankles over my thighs as he does so. Somehow, I manage to resist the urge to grab his knees and haul him properly into my lap. 

“See, my thing is,” I start, leaning my chin in my palm. He leans up to look back at me, grinning. “You now know all of my dirty sheepy secrets, but I still have things I’m wondering about you too.”

“Well, I’m more of a goat kind of guy, if you must know.”

I snort, containing an incredibly nervous giggle. I wonder if he realizes how intensely true those words are. Before he catches onto me, I squint, giving him my best approximation of a scrutinizing look. “I will answer your questions, if you promise to answer three of mine after.”

He bites his lip, his eyes wandering. “Isn’t that the plot of Rumpelstiltskin?” I scrunch my face up and think. God, I don’t even know. “Ohhh, no,” he says, lacing his fingers over his stomach. “That’s the one where he lets the girl spin gold in exchange for her first-born son, and when he comes collecting, she has three tries to guess his name to get out of it.”

I run a hand over my face. “Oh man, I should’ve done that. It’s way better than Jean Claude van Damme.” He laughs, and I lean over to cross my forearms on his bent knees. “Incidentally, that is exactly what happened to all my siblings, it just took my mother twelve kids to get Rumpelstiltskin’s name right.”

His eyes widen. “Okay, you’re either an only child or you have twelve older siblings.”

“Which do you think? Fifty-fifty chance.”

Leaning up onto his elbows, he squints at me. I wonder if he has his contacts in. “Let’s see, you don’t seem followed by a cloud of doom,” I think about Eren and snort. “You’re not particularly runty, and you have an actual sense of privacy. Also, while you maintain a generally unkempt aesthetic—which works quite well for you, by the way—” I can feel myself flushing all the way to my damn ears. “—you don’t look like an orphan, which is the effect I imagine twelve older siblings would have on your appearance. I’m gonna go with only child.”

“You must’ve been killer at Guess Who.” He laughs loudly, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, my parents stopped after me, probably because there was only one extra bedroom and they’d had enough moving for a lifetime coming here from Germany.”

“Fair enough. That just leaves the phone number.”

I lean back on my hands again, considering him for a moment. He just raises his eyebrows and makes good on his staring threat. “You’re not gonna believe me,” I start, watching his smile quirk into something already mimicking skepticism. “But I actually don’t have a cell phone.”

To my surprise, he slaps his palm on my knee and blurts, “I knew it!” I make a face at him. “See, I had a theory about this, hear me out.” He sits up again and retrieves his legs, crossing them and scooting forward until our knees are squished together. Leaning excitedly into my space, he continues, “My theory was that after you had found my phone, your intent was to keep it.” I raise an eyebrow at him. “But, you were intimidated by it and found that it was too much power for one man to possess, so you decided to return it to the only hands capable of wielding it.”

It is definitely too much phone. I laugh at him. “Okay, are we talking Excalibur power or the One Ring power?”

“Obviously the One Ring. You wouldn’t be able to lift Excalibur.”

“Listen, Mr. High School Tuba Man,” I snort as I push him back into the sheets, “Not all of us are big buff knights of the nerd round table, okay? Besides, my compact size probably makes me faster than you.” Wow, he actually looks good lying there. He leans back up on his elbows and rolls his eyes at me. Like, really good, jeez. 

“Alright, you have satisfied me, although I’m very confused as to how you can possibly manage to live in this world without a cell phone.” It helps that everyone I know is dead. Dead people don’t need phones. “Your turn, then.”

I totally forgot my questions. Leaning my elbows on my knees, I squint at him, completely eating up the challenging eyebrow raise he gives me. I go with the first thing that comes to mind. “Why the collarbone piercings?”

“What, you don’t think they’re fun?” 

“I absolutely did not say that.” I won’t define the kind of fun I’m thinking of. “It’s just not something I see around a lot.”

“Well,” he says, reaching up to pull the collar of his shirt over so I can see them again. “They’re nice, and I don’t have to take them out to do my job, and they work nicely with the other ones.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “Other ones?”

He bites his lip and grins, and I almost regret asking because I feel like his answer is gonna give me a half-chub. 

It does.

Teasingly slow, and with that stupid amused twinkle in his eye, he reaches down and hitches the bottom of his shirt up over his hip bones. I barely suppress a groan. They jut up out of his gorgeous stomach just barely, and there are indeed matching silver balls, two on each side riding along the soft lines his hip bones make toward—ohmygod he has a happy trail. Fuck.

“Wow,” he mutters, letting his shirt rest midway up his stomach. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone turn that shade of red before.”

My mouth is so goddamn dry. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and that sadistic bastard is absolutely enjoying it, because I swear to god he just wiggled his hips at me a little bit. I’m gonna pass out.

“Alright, well, now I know that if I ever need to break Jean Kirschtein for a while, I just have to lift up my shirt.” I peer back up at him, half because I wanna see his teeth dig into his lip and half because if I look at his fucking perfect body anymore I’m going to die of thirst. “Useful information.”

He has mercy on me and pulls his shirt back down, breaking the spell he’d effectively rendered me useless with. I blink a few times and run my hands down my face, and I hope the laugh I give him doesn’t sound as strained as I feel.

“You still have two questions there, cowboy.” 

Do not think about riding. I have completely forgotten my questions again. Balls. He’s laughing at me, though, and I take comfort in the fact that he’s fucking blushing too.

“Uh,” I manage to creak. I clear my throat and try desperately to think about anything but the thin, dark trail of hair leading down into his pants. 

“Would you like to phone a friend?” He bats his eyelashes at me, so I give him a grimace as I run my fingers through my hair. “You can borrow mine if you think you can handle it.”

He just fucking _purred_ at me. Good. Great. And once again, all I can think about is fucking the living daylights out of him. Excellent.

I bury my face in my hands and flop back onto his bed with a laugh. Before I can come up with a distractor question, though, I pull my hands away from my face and his wide, flushed grin is above me, playful and adorable. He lets me reach up and pull him to my chest, kissing him gently and sucking teasingly at his lower lip in a way he taught me to make his breath stutter just a tiny bit. 

“Mm,” he hums, coming to rest his weight on his elbows above me. “That totally counts as one of your questions.”

“Hey, that’s cheap,” I mumble, running my hands down his ribs to his waist and fiddling with the soft fabric of his shirt. “No warning or anything?”

“Sorry, I don’t make the rules.” He leans his chin in one palm, and I realize dimly that he’s straddling me with as little contact as possible, and I really wish he’d settle his hips against mine. Then again, I think my dick might be near breaking my zipper, so maybe not. “Last question, then.”

His shirt hangs loose from his shoulders, which allows me to see his collar piercings and his tight stomach and—I close my eyes and contain myself before I look further.

Besides, I’m incredibly distracted again by the thick scar cleaving his chest. 

I bite my lip. “Alright, number three.” I reach up carefully and poke him in the chest, stopping myself from tracing the scar from the hollow of his throat down by sheer willpower. My eyes move from my finger to his face, where he’s still smiling easily at me. I don’t have to put words to my question.

“Don’t look so serious,” he says as he sits up, giving me a reassuring look. He pulls the loose collar of his shirt down as far as it will go, but the scar continues further down his chest. “I was born with a congenital heart defect, so they had to do surgery when I was a baby. I stopped being shy about it ages ago.” He smiles down his shirt. “It reminds me how lucky I am, you know?”

Lucky.

I could cry.

Staring up at him, I reach out and rest my trembling fingers against his knees, and he sits back on my thighs, far enough down my lap that I get to keep my sanity.

“You okay?”

Even though I’ve always been a horrible liar, I nod and swallow. He smiles gently at me, biting his lip, and when he leans back down against me he whispers against my lips, “All out of questions.” Then he’s kissing me again, and there is no more careful space between our bodies.

He takes from me my barely-held restraint and shows me instead that my pressing desire to be closer to him is not one-sided. 

At least, that’s what I’m assuming he means by the hardness he casually rests in the hollow of my hip as he slides his tongue between my lips and buries his fingers in my hair.

His kisses are slow and deep, so loving and warm and every time my fingers twitch against his sides, he hums, and when I gently, just barely nudge my hips against his, he gasps against my lips in a way that leaves me helpless for him. 

I want him.

I’ll take anything he gives me, anything he allows me, and I’ll give him everything I have and probably borrow some too just to see him, to feel him.

He pulls away from me, sitting up again and fluidly pulling his shirt off, and my breath escapes me in a rattling sigh as my eye devours his—god, his fucking _beautiful_ body. It’s so much more than I could have ever imagined, and I can see the thick bulge his cock’s making against his pants.

“M-Marco,” I manage breathlessly, scared to even blink, and god _damn_ the broken half of my vision because while I know he’s moving, I have to lean my head just barely to soak all of him in. It’s still not enough. I am robbed by half. Memorizing him will take twice as long, and it’ll never be enough to truly create a mental image of how perfect he is here in this dim light.

My eyes slide closed, though, when he slides off of me and off the bed, and I use the space to scrub my hands down my face in an attempt to get my shit together.

I hear him pad over to the TV, and the headline _‘—flights into and out of Tel Aviv and Cairo have been cut off until further—’_ cuts through the still air before he turns the damn thing off and stares at the blank screen. Twisting around, I shift to sit up with my feet hanging off the edge of the bed, watching him and waiting for him to come back to me. He seems to consider the dark screen for a moment, before he turns and comes to stand in front of me, a smile gracing his lips and his eyes dark, beautifully dark. The kind of dark he’d levelled me with that night we got beers together.

I want him. So badly. I’m sure that the way I’m staring up at him cannot possibly begin to communicate the heat building in my chest and my gut, but I do it anyway, and _god almighty_ he trails his hands down to his pants, and he unbuttons his jeans with his lip caught in his teeth, and right before he pulls the zipper down he slides between my sprawled knees and tilts my chin up so I’m staring up at him again.

“Jean,” he murmurs, not quite that brain-melting purr from before but enough to send a thrill through me just the same as it keeps my attention. “Are you okay with going further tonight?”

Trying not to sway as I attempt to comprehend that, I nod, reaching up to wrap my fingers gently around his so I can press kisses into his warm palm. 

“Have you ever been with anyone before?”

My wince is obvious, and I don’t need to explain the miserable look I shoot him through my bangs. He just smiles, though, and rests his free hand against my other cheek. “How far d’you wanna go?”

I consider his wrist, his tight stomach, the arch of his cock easing his zipper down whether he likes it or not (his underwear’s bright fucking red), and I part my lips and wrap them around the tip of one of his thumbs as I look back up at him. Laving my tongue over his sweet skin, I watch him flush and bite his lip again, still intent on remaining unintimidating until I give him my answer.

Of course I tell him the same thing it’s always been.

“I want… I want everything you want to give me.” My voice is raspy. Fuck it. I press another kiss to his thumb, then reach up with both hands to rest trembling fingers on his hips. “I want you.”

He’s flushed so dark, so pretty. He climbs slowly onto the bed, into my lap, and the kiss he gives me is gentle and sweet and _fuck._ “I’ll go slow, okay?” He kisses me again, letting me nod against him. “If you want me to stop or slow down, please tell me.” Another kiss, another nod. He whispers against my lips, “And tell me what feels good,” before his hands move to guide me further up the bed, up into his pillows, and while I adjust myself, he fucking _crawls_ up the bed toward me and I have very real concerns about how much I can resist fucking coming in my pants.

He’s so fucking beautiful, and now he’s sitting in my lap and he _wants_ me, and my self-control has never been so sorely tested before.

Straddling me again, he looks down at me and pulls his zipper down so I can see just how much he wants me too, filling out that red underwear so pretty it leaves me breathless. He lets me pull him back down to me, though, and he kisses me so deeply that it’s easy to lose myself in him. It’s easy to wrap my arms around his bare waist and hold him tight against me, it’s easy to let him drive my mind blank with his tongue… the world exists for me and him, and I want nothing but this until the universe falls to ashes.

Then he shifts against me, and his hardness rubs against mine, and suddenly I want much, much more.

This is already closer than I’ve ever been, farther than I’ve ever gone, but I’m relaxing, softening, my toes uncurling and my breath evening out, and he supports his weight so easily above me. He’s so warm. 

I hug him tight, squeezing for a moment, before I relax my arms to ghost my fingers up his sides, over his ribs, hesitantly touching and exploring and looking up at him. He’s still smiling, having enough mercy to not rock his hips against me, even though the warmth of his thighs spread over my hips and the way our cocks press tight together seems like it’s testing his patience.

Luckily, he’s got an infinite supply.

He kisses me again, softly and sweetly, an invitation that I eagerly take. He lets me lean up and kiss him back, taking my time, and when I run my tongue out along his lips he lets me in gladly with a little sigh. His gentleness makes me bolder. I kiss him deeper, sliding my tongue along his and letting him guide me, and without thinking I slide my hands warmly and firmly down his back, hesitance gone from my touch. The low hum he lets out against me at that makes me curse softly, and when he smiles and kisses me again, I lean up into him gladly, so gladly.

I think I’ve got myself under control. Maybe. I’m so far out of my league here, this fucking smoking hot beautiful gentle dude holding himself perfectly in my comfort zone and being completely content with what I’m willing to give him, but god dammit I want more.

“Hey,” I murmur against him, flicking my gaze between his eyes and his pretty flushed freckles. He hums in response, dropping tiny little kisses against my parted lips. “Let me…” I swallow nervously, and he pulls away just a fraction, but I wrap my arms around his waist again to let him know I’m okay. “Let me touch you?”

He seems to consider this, his breath a shaky exhale against my cheek, and I swear to god his pupils widen further and the warmth in his eyes makes my body hotter. “Please,” he whispers, the plea just soft enough, just insistent enough that it makes me want him more. 

I blink a few times, feeling my brow knit in concentration, and he laughs quietly and kisses the frown off of my face. I feel him adjusting against me, pulling himself up onto his knees so I can reach between us, and when I palm at his amazingly hard dick through his stupid beautiful red underwear he lets out this shaky moan. Dammit.

I’m not sure at this point whether the restraint of my pants is helping me or making life harder, but I can’t help the way my hips twitch up regardless.

He wants more, I know he does, and when I slide my hand along his stomach, into his boxers, and wrap my fingers around him, his mouth drops open with a little whine.

Fuck my inexperience, fuck my stupid cock, fuck the fact that I have to close my eyes and bite my lip to keep it together. 

Once I’ve got my head on my shoulders again and I can focus on him without worrying about blowing in my pants, I stroke him slowly, the same way I’d do to myself. He drops his head against my shoulder with this raspy moan. His hips are shaking with his restraint. Patience of a motherfucking saint.

“Jean,” he breathes, his mouth warm against my shirt that I’m still wearing for some unfathomable reason. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye, catching the edge of his expression that shows how genuine his reactions are.

“Yeah?” 

He moans again, low, and leans up to face me again. I can feel his hand moving then, sliding over my chest, over my stomach, trailing down slowly to run his fingers along the edge of my pants. “Can I?”

Ohhhh please don’t come. I look up at him, and he bites his lip and waits for my response. 

Fuck.

I give him a quick nod, watching the way his lips crook up in a little smile, and as he reaches between us to unbutton my loose jeans, I wrap my hand around him more firmly and stroke him once, twice, encouraging both of us. He pauses what he’s doing, a low groan escaping him, before he pulls my zipper down and shifts my pants enough that he can see how bad of a tent I’m pitching.

When his hand slides along my dick through my boxers, I squeeze my eyes shut and gasp, biting my lip and trying, trying to calm myself down. Trying not to make an ass of myself.

“This is nice,” he mumbles, his long fingers pressing and teasing, and _fuck_ that feels nice. My slow rhythm over his cock falters for a second before I start stroking him a little faster, sliding my thumb gently through his precome-slick slit. I don’t even have time to marvel about how different his cock is from mine when he _squeaks_ at me, wriggling a little, and my eyebrows shoot up. 

“Y-you okay?”

“Yeah, mmh, that’s just, ah…” I peer up at him, and he flushes _so_ dark, somehow looking a little shy. He mumbles at me for a second, pulling his hands back to slide his pants and his boxers down over his hips, and yup _definitely_ different. “It’s r-really sensitive right there, ‘c-cause the whole. Foreskin thing.” I’m trying not to stare, I am, but I cannot help it because if my dick’s kinda average-looking, his is, like. 

_Appetizing_ is a weird word for it.

But it’s really fucking nice-looking, okay. And his foreskin is this cute little fucking… turtleneck. For the head. The head of his dick. Oh my god.

He bites his lip, watching my face probably turn purple, and when I stare up at him with what I imagine to be a kicked-puppy face, he gives an almost relieved, breathy laugh. 

“Jean, you’re really cute, you know that?”

The only response I have is the fakest grump that has ever grumped, which brings a louder giggle out of him, and he leans down and sucks at my protruding lip.

“Stroking it is good,” he murmurs, guiding my wrist back into the slow, easy rhythm I’d carried before. “Usually touching the head straight on is too much, but I like that thumb thing you did right when I’m about to come.”

I can feel my eyes widening, and he grins down at me like he’d just told me he likes ice cream, and I’m really glad his hands are not on my dick right now because now I’m thinking about him coming and that. That is, uh. Fantastic.

All I’ve got for him is a nerdy whimper. He takes it.

His hands come to cup my face again, pulling me into a gentle kiss while I stroke his _dick, god,_ and his breath starts coming a little faster against my parted lips, and _god_ he’s beautiful. I should’ve fucking read more Shakespeare in school because I know I sound like a broken record right now, but there are no concise words to describe the tender, soft, gentle, patient, wonderful, _loving_ way he’s looking at me right now. 

He reaches down again and tugs at the waistband of my boxers, watching me for discomfort or reluctance, and when he finds none, he pulls them down and lets my (admittedly kinda sloppy) arousal free. I bite my lip, slightly nervous about him seeing me, about _anyone_ seeing me _ever,_ but he licks his lips and looks at my cock, his fingers playing through my copious precome in a way that gives me shivers. My hips twitch up again, my rhythm stuttering for a moment.

“Yeah,” he breathes, wrapping his hand around me just so and stroking me _just_ right, oh god. “This is… nngh.” I flick my eyes up to him, and swear to god I almost come right there because the face he makes when he’s turned on is _incredible_ and sends shocks straight to my dick. “This is really nice.”

“Th-thanks.” Fuck. Dork. He grins, though, and gives me a quick, dirty kiss, one that leaves me arching after his lips, hungry for more. 

“D’you…” He licks his lips, moving so that he can rub his thumb right against that sensitive part just under the head, and I squeeze my eyes shut so he doesn’t see them fucking _cross,_ oh my _god_ that’s good. I almost miss what he says next, his voice so low and his fingers so distracting. “I-I wanna feel you inside of me,” he says quietly, shakily, and I rip my hand off his hip and grab his wrist and pull his fingers away from me and take a second to just _breathe, breathe, breathe, oh my god._

I pull my hand off his cock too and fist it in the sheets, eyes squeezed shut, just. Breathing. And not coming. Definitely not that. By some miracle.

“Jean?”

The little whimper I let out is less helpful than I’d anticipated, especially given what he asks next. “Do you… do you wanna stop?”

“Please no,” I manage, my voice squeaky, and after I’ve taken a few shaky breaths I feel brave enough to look up at him, up at his concerned, patient face, and the face I make must tip him off about my struggle.

He blinks down at me, wide, dark Bambi eyes, and he gets it pretty quickly and lets out a tiny, quiet, “Oh.” I watch him swallow, looking between my flushed face and the bead of precome that had dripped heavy onto my stomach, and he pushes my shirt up a little more to spare it a messy fate. “J-Jean, god…” I twitch my eyebrows in a manner approaching questioning. “Your face, it’s _so_ hot.” I really doubt I can flush darker, given that all the blood in my body is evenly divided between dick and face, but my heart flutters in a way that tells me it’s giving it a try. 

Leaning down to kiss me again, thankfully sparing my dick any unexpected sensation and instead kissing me… oh, man, _wetly,_ needy, moaning softly when I thrust my tongue into his mouth, Marco twines his fingers with mine and rests his forehead against mine. “Do you want to…?” His voice comes in breathy little pants. Amazing. I look between us, as if trying to get visual confirmation that my stupid virgin dick isn’t going to make me miserable. No such signals. He’s so hard too, though, damn… 

I flop my head back into the pillows and let out a long, steady exhale. “Y-yeah,” I manage, finally answering his question. “Yeah, I do, uh.”

He cuts me off with a kiss before I can make excuses or apologize in advance, inspiring the bravery in me to nudge my cock up against his, the movement making us both shiver and gasp against each other.

“Should take your clothes off.”

Looks like I’m not the only one getting bolder.

He rolls off of me and shucks his shorts and underwear easily, running his hand through his hair with a laugh, and _god_ I am in love with that stupid dopey face. He helps me with my pants while I haul my shirt over my head, tossing it god knows where, and while he rifles in the bedside table with a determined expression, I do away with my underwear. Even being naked in his bed, completely exposed, I don’t feel uncomfortable.

He finds whatever he’s looking for with a triumphant sound and drops some condoms and a bottle of lube next to me. I look up at him as he straddles me again, unable to tear my eyes away from his beautiful chest and his piercings and his hips and _god_ his long, long, perfect thighs. He’s distracted, though, and I forget why for a moment until he runs gentle fingers over the spidery scar from the wound that took me from this world to begin with.

Oh. Yeah.

Dammit.

Swallowing nervously, I try not to think about that too hard. Or really, any of the other shit I’d forgotten in the last what half hour or so. 

“I, uh,” I stammer. He looks up at me, his fingers resting over the raised brunt of the scar. Oh, fuck it. I’m done lying. “I got stabbed.”

“Jesus,” he murmurs. I laugh slightly, sliding my palms up his thighs to distract myself and hopefully him. It works. He stows whatever questions he has about it, leaning down to press his lips gently against it, which apparently tickles _a fucking lot._ I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t thought about it. Ever, really, I don’t think. I wriggle under him, and he grins up at me, poking his tongue out between his teeth.

He lets me pull him up to kiss him again, like I could ever get enough of his lips or his teeth or his tongue, and he hums against me.

“You’re cute,” I murmur against him. So goddamn cute. All the goddamn time. He accepts the compliment with more grace than I, kissing my nose in thanks. 

I’m so at peace that I’d forgotten that I am naked and I am also somehow still really hard. Jeez. He is, too. I reach up to slide my palms slowly from his hips over his stomach, his ribs, up around his neck to tug him back down again for more kisses.

“Are you left-handed?”

I blink up at him, letting him pull away enough to see him, and nod. “How’d you know?”

He grins, leaning his chin in his hand. “You play guitar lefty, use knives, remotes, sponges… even give lefty handjobs.” I flush bright red again, and he laughs, kissing most of the tomato color out of me. “Let me see this.” He grabs my left hand. I nod, resting my other hand behind my head and watching him play with my fingers. “They’re rough… probably from the strings, hmm?” I nod again, my pulse settling into genuine contentment. I like it here.

I like being here, him in my lap, admiring how flexible my knuckles are and comparing our hands. Just watching. He blinks down at me and flushes, already leaning down for me to kiss him softly.

This is perfect.

If I’d been in danger of going soft at all, the fear is immediately banished when he leans in and bites softly up my ear, then whispers, “You wanna use your fingers? Or would you rather watch me?” His husky, _god_ sexy voice skips my ear and goes straight to my dick, and he chuckles when I twitch my hips up against him. “I can tell you what to do…”

I nod quickly against him, perhaps too quickly showing my enthusiasm for putting my hands on him, but he just grins and leans over to grab the lube. It’s a little cool and super slippery on my fingers, dripping onto my palm, and I move my free hand back to his hip while he shows me how to spread it around my fingers so my knuckles aren’t dry. Then he’s licking his lips, and he’s kneeling over my stomach, and then he’s guiding my fingers between his spread thighs, and he’s correct in his apparent assumption that he can leave the rest to my historically overactive imagination. Oh god.

The way he holds his weight, with hands in the sheets on either side of my head, lets me watch his face while I spread slick lube against his. Uh. Wow. I swallow nervously and feel like a giant goober, but he gives me this encouraging little smile and wiggles. Slowly, gently, I press the tip of one finger _inside of Marco,_ god, my eyes searching his face for signs of discomfort, for anything other than his cute smile and his flushed cheeks.

“I’m not made of glass, you know,” he says with a little laugh. I give him an apologetic smile, then slide my finger deeper, and _wow,_ it kinda just. Goes. “Jean, oh my god,” he says, shaking with giggles. “You should see your face…”

“Thought you liked my face,” I wheeze, thrusting my middle finger inside of him and trying really hard to forget that his ass is _amazing_ and I somehow have to survive putting my _dick_ in here, oh god.

“Mhm, I do,” he hums, reaching up to brush my bangs away from my forehead as he ducks down and kisses me again. Never enough. “But you look like… this odd mix of impressed and terrified.”

“That is actually a perfect description of how I feel,” I mumble, nudging my nose against his and thrusting my finger a little more. 

“D’you think you could help me out here and throw ‘turned on’ in there, too?”

“What, ‘impressified’ doesn’t do it for you?”

“Mm, it’s amusing, but, ah. You know.”

I laugh despite myself, squeezing his hip, and he seems to respond well to me sliding a second finger against him. I’m surprised how easily he gives under my fingers. Like he’s melting or something. Butt stuff has a reputation, but I guess if you know what you’re doing, then. Uh. I swallow, looking between us again, and I’m half glad I did and half tempted to close my eyes, because _wow._ Jesus. I can see my hand moving as I thrust my fingers into him, biting my lip and picking up the pace just slightly. He lets out this little shivering moan, and once again, I’m fucking rock hard and too warm. 

“Try curling your fingers,” he murmurs, and I flick my gaze back up to his face as I do so. He bites his lip, shifting his hips, but when I thrust a little deeper and curl a little harder, his beautiful body fucking _shudders_ and his mouth falls open on a tiny whimper. Oh my god. I lick my lips, then I do it again, and every time I hit what he’s looking for, his cock twitches and his face flushes just a little darker. “That’s g-good, Jean…”

Oh god.

I let out a shuddering moan, pulsing my hips up against nothing. He’s _really_ hot. Especially when his eyes slide shut, and _god_ his hips rock down against my hand. Oh god.

Curling my fingers again, I thrust a little faster and he _moans,_ and then I remember once more that I’m opening him up for my _cock_ and oh good lord. I might die. Again.

“N-now, uh,” he murmurs, swallowing, “D-do this a little.” I watch him scissor his fingers open and shut, and I slowly mimic the gesture, which has him shivering.

“Goddamn, Marco,” I breathe. “God.” He holds still while I slide my third slick finger into him, trembling as I slide them in up to my knuckles, and his head drops as he lets out a gasp. “Is it o-okay?”

“Yes, _god,_ ” he mumbles, opening his bleary eyes to slide his thumb over my flushed cheek. “It feels… r-really good.”

“O-oh.”

He grins at my dumb response, a breathy, flushed, fucking _horny_ grin, and I’m hard-pressed not to whimper at that face. God, he’s incredible. So tight around my fingers, and so hot, and he’s just. He’s fucking amazing.

I spread my fingers apart a little more, then I curl them in that way that has him shaking in my lap, then he’s murmuring for me to take them out and handing me a little towel from Christ knows where.

This is also the point where I realize he’s sliding onto my thighs as he pulls a condom off the short strip he’d put next to me. Oh. Right. Oh my fucking god.

“Is it okay?” He holds up the condom, carefully watching my face, but I’m still not entirely in possession of a brain.

“N-not allergic to latex,” I squeak at him, and he laughs and leans back down to kiss me soundly.

“I meant, is it okay if I ride you now?”

Ohgodohgodohgod—

He laughs, nuzzling me soothingly. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to—”

I’m talking before I can stop myself. Babbling. Bad habit. “I’m gonna come in like a second do you have any idea how good you feel u-uh—”

I don’t know how Marco somehow finds my ass charming but he is seriously a special breed of human, because he lays against me again and kisses me, feasibly to shut me up. My eyes flutter shut, though, and he kisses me until I have stopped freaking out. For the moment.

“We don’t have to, Jean.” He makes sure I’m looking at him as he repeats himself, and I know he means it. I’m not scared of losing my virginity. I am, however, scared of coming so hard I pass out the second he sinks down onto me and waking up in, like, the boyfriend dumpster or something.

It’s a stupid fear. This is _Marco._ Come on.

“I want to,” I murmur, playing with a stray cowlick of his that cropped up sometime during all of this. “I just, uh.”

“Jean,” he replies warmly, leaning up onto his elbow and tugging at my ear. “I was a virgin too once, yeah? Come on. It’s not like it’d be the end of the world if you felt good.”

I make a face. He has a point. Chuckling, he kisses my cheek, and I know he’s not gonna push it anymore in case I wanna back out. But I really fucking don’t. Not now.

I want him.

I wanna see that face of his again, hear his soft little moans and gasps, maybe even hear him moan my name.

Tugging the condom out of his loose grasp, I open it and roll it into my cock, then look back down at him, just barely pressing against his hip to encourage him to move back over me. He grins, oh man, and leans down to bite gently at my lips again as he straddles me and spreads more lube over me. Then he’s wiping lube off his fingers and watching me, watching the way my breath picks up, the way I bite my lip.

I’m not nervous.

For once, I’m not lying about that.

Seeming satisfied, Marco tilts his head at me, then pulls my hands to his hips as he rises over me, and then oh god my cock’s _right there._ “Ready?” I look up at him as he asks, offering me one last out. I hope my nod looks as firm as it feels because I’m so fucking ready.

My hands on his hips, thumbs tracing idly across the ridges of his hip bones, he reaches down and steadies me, then he’s pressing down and I am so not fucking ready, because _Jesus God he’s fucking incredible._

What do I even do with myself?

I shake like a leaf while he sinks down onto me, my breath coming faster, my fingers gripping him tightly, and _god_ I can’t—I cannot describe the feeling of me spreading him open, and of his fucking _tight_ fucking _good amazing_ heat around me, and to spare myself the incredible view my eyes roll back and shutter closed.

Fuck.

I let out this weird little whimper, my mouth dropping open and completely failing to produce coherent mouth sounds. I feel him settle against me and gently press my body back into the sheets because apparently at some point I had arched my hips up to get closer to him. 

Thank god he’s merciful and kind and sweet and perfect and patient and, and—everything. Because he settles in my lap, he’s _sitting on my dick,_ and he has the sweet pity to not move right away. To let me attempt to entertain the idea that I could ever get used to a feeling this amazing.

Biting my lip, I open my eyes and blearily peer up at him. Oh yeah. One eye’s broke. Oh well. I’ll be okay. Everything’ll be okay, because he’s giving me this breathless smile and tilting his head at me and resting his soft palms over the weird claws I call hands holding him tightly against me. God. I swallow once, then a few times more, trying to catch my breath.

“How is it?”

The only response I can even conceive of is a slightly shrill laugh, and his grin widens beautifully, so beautifully. So perfect. Perfect Marco, perfect beautiful Marco that I love, so so so much…

Oh god I hope I haven’t been talking to myself.

I suck my lip between my teeth and stare up at him, and he strokes his thumbs over my wrists.

“God, Jean,” he sighs, blinking slowly down at me. “You’re so sensitive, it’s incredible…”

“Hnk.”

He laughs, the sound sweet and loud and _wow,_ yup, I can feel that around my dick too. Christ.

My voice wavers when I find words again. “I d-don’t think I can top…”

More blinking, another amused smile. “Why’s that?”

“I, uh.” Because his ass is so amazing I might be having an existential crisis. “It’s… you’re r-really fucking good.”

“Mm, thank you,” he murmurs, sliding his fingers up my tense, shaking forearms. “Jean, don’t you masturbate?”

“All the goddamn time.”

He hums, which might make my eyes cross just a little. “Must be better than I thought.”

All I can do is agree weakly. God.

Maybe I’m broken. Oh god. Existential crisis.

Marco moves to stroke himself lazily, watching me without pressuring me and without rushing me. Just watching. I bite my lip, taking a deep breath, and somehow I manage to roll my hips up gently against him without my head exploding, and he grins when I mumble, “’Kay…”

“I’ll go easy on you,” he promises, his voice husky and _oh_ sexy, and he moves his hands to rest on my shaking thighs to support himself, and then oh my god oh god oh god. Oh god. He’s lifting his hips, sliding up, so slow and gentle, just a few inches, and then he’s lowering himself back onto my cock just as slowly and I’m fucking… wow. Wow.

“M-M-Marco,” I moan, breathing hard and wiggling, my hips twitching up into him, and _god_ he feels good. He’s so good. I want more, fuck. I open my good eye and look up at his flushed face, at the way he bites his lip and his dark eyes rake up and down my sweaty body, and when he catches my gaze, he gives me this incredible little smile and moans softly.

“You feel… s-so good, Jean. Feels amazing.” I wheeze at him, which he correctly translates as ‘please tell me more.’ His hips arch up higher, and he moans softly when I’m buried inside of him again, and he gasps, “You’re th-thick, ‘nd it hits… all the right places. God, Jean…” He swivels his hips, dragging my name out on a moan, and somehow I find it in me to encourage him to move a little faster with my hands on him. 

His moans are _perfect._ He’s perfect. I’m moaning too, fuck, and cursing and gasping and calling his name, and he whines for me when I manage to time my helpless lame thrusts just right to make him shiver. Oh god, he’s _so good._

I feel him shift in my lap, and then he’s moving again, and this time his moans are _loud_ and sweet and colored with _my name,_ like _I’m_ the one pulling them out of him, and he tells me in shaky gasps that this is perfect, and that I feel good, _so good—_

Ah, no—

My grip on his hips shakes, and I pull my knees up enough to break his stride, his perfect rhythm of riding my dick, and I’m gasping again and squeezing my eyes shut again.

“Th-that’s—Marco, ‘s too good, ‘s gonna make me c-come.”

I peek up at him and _god_ he’s smiling and wiggling, tongue sneaking out to wet his lips. God, he looks so good. I didn’t think people actually flushed down onto their chests.

He gently eases me back the way I was before I curled up around him and twines his fingers with mine on his hips. My grip twitches as my joints relax for once, soothed by his hands. I’m breathing hard, staring helplessly up at him. He’s barely sweaty. Somehow. 

I know he’s enjoying himself, though, because his thighs are shaking, and there’s a gleaming, transparent strand of precome dripping from his flushed, half-hooded cock and connecting him to my tensing stomach. So perfect.

“Jean,” he sighs, my name beautiful coming in his breathy, aroused voice. “Don’t worry, love. Just come for me. Don’t hold back.” I dig my teeth into my lip. “We’ve got time, Jean. I wanna see you. Let me see how good you feel, okay?”

I’m powerless against him.

I take a deep, shuddering breath, and on impulse I use his grip to pull him to me, and just as I kiss him desperately, I give in and snap helplessly up into him, thrusting deep into his tight, sweet ass, and _god_ he moans for me when I suck on his lip, and then at his jaw, and god he’s _so good, so good,_ I can’t.

I’m gasping his name, arching under him, my hands sliding down to grip his thighs, and he’s moaning so sweetly and making the prettiest faces and saying my name even as he somehow rolls his hips into my uneven thrusts, and then. Then I hit something good, I can tell. Because his back arches _oh_ perfect, and Marco _cries_ my name, _mine,_ and I tumble over the edge thrusting up into him and whimpering for him.

Fuck.

Oh, he feels… he feels so good.

Still coming.

Breath coming in uneven gasps, my body tense and still barely rocking up into him, I’m just. God. Marco’s… oh.

I’m shocked I haven’t died when I regain some semblance of sanity, my hands shaking and weak, resting right where his thighs meet his body. I swallow, panting in the aftermath, and when I look up at him he’s still wearing that beautiful _‘I want you’_ face. I notice blearily that he’s slowly stroking his hard cock, sitting mercifully still on me. Still wrapped around me, though, oh man.

“Jean,” he sighs, and I refocus my working eye on his face. “God, you look _amazing_ when you come.” I watch him lick his lips. None of my damn muscles work. “Damn, Jean. You’re incredible.”

I am offended. “Me?” I croak, shaking feeling into my dead hands, and he laughs and raises his eyebrows.

“Yep, you.”

“No.”

He laughs again, less breathy and more giggly, covering his mouth. “I’m sorry you disagree.”

“’S you. Not me.”

“Oh, so you enjoyed it, did you?”

“Jesus, Marco,” I groan, and he takes my brief distraction to pull off of my softening cock. I came a lot. Ugh. He flops down next to me and watches me wrangle the condom off, somehow not making a damn mess, and he takes it so he can tie it off and drop it in a trashcan under his nightstand. Convenient.

While my brains reassemble themselves, I run my hands down my face and groan, and he giggles at me.

God, he’s still hard.

And goddamn he’s… you get it. 

No amount of time spent staring at him could possibly ever be enough. So I stare. And try to make up for it. 

He watches me stare at him, dick hard and wet against his stomach, and he sticks his tongue out at me.

“There are no words for what has happened here.”

That starts him laughing, that loud Disney prince laugh, which really fucking sets my heart beating when I’m the one that caused it. He rolls toward me and bites his lip. “So am I allowed to assume that you had a good time?”

I let my eyes slide closed, and I reach out for him purely on instinct and pull him against me so I can bury my face in his musky neck. “No words, Marco.”

“Thank you for clarifying.”

It would appear that coming so hard my brains scramble and reform themselves makes me snuggly, because rather than respond, I just do my very best to press every single part of our bodies together in a sweaty boy tangle, and he giggles and occasionally helps when he’s not sighing at the way his cock rubs against my stomach.

Leaning back from his neck, I kiss him again, trying to communicate that way just how fucking… jeez, overwhelmed and satisfied and grateful and mind-blown that I am, and the little hums he lets out against me kind of signal that he gets it, and I’m fucking glad, because I might have had to resort to writing poetry.

Reaching between us, I wrap my hand around his cock again, and he shivers and arches into it so nicely.

“Tell me how to make you come,” I rasp against him. He moans at that, his fingers tightening just barely on my shoulders. “However you want it right now. Anything.”

He grins, biting his lip and flushing at my lazy, husky words, then nods and maneuvers us so he’s on his back. I kneel between his slightly-shaking thighs, waiting for instructions. Anything.

“K-keep, ah. With your hand.” I do. I keep in mind that the head’s sensitive and try to find other ways to pull pretty little moans out of him, and he seems to appreciate my exploration. “You can u-use your fingers, too…” He licks his lips when I blink at him, having a stupid moment, before I remember that I have a whole other hand just laying uselessly on his thigh. “L-like you did earlier.”

Still slick with lube and _god_ relaxed from having been filled up by me, his body takes two of my fingers easily and holds them snugly while I thrust them up into him. He shivers, hands still resting on my shoulders.

I lean in and kiss at his neck, nudging his chin aside so I can drag my teeth down the arched, sweaty column of his beautiful throat, god. He likes that. He likes the way I suck at the hollow of his collarbone, the way I drag my tongue between his little piercings, the way I mouth down his gasping ribs and kiss each one when he takes deep, shaky breaths and they poke up at me. He likes the way I trace the arch of his ribcage with my lips up to the end of the scar marking the length of his sternum. He likes the way I kiss down his stomach and suck a pale red mark above his navel. Thrusting my tongue into his belly button makes his stomach tense with the breathless giggle he lets out, but he’s wiggling again when I curl my fingers up firmly and open my eyes to stare up at him. 

My gaze makes his eyes shutter closed and his back arch pretty as he breathes my name and rocks his hips against my slowly thrusting fingers, into my firm grip around him, and that movement nudges the head of his cock against the underside of my chin. He’s slick with precome too, more than a little messy when my strokes tease his foreskin back. I don’t even question the urge to lean down and slide my tongue over the soaked head of his cock, tasting him carefully. He arches again, twitching, his thighs squeezing my sides and his body tightening perfectly around my fingers, but it’s the way he cries out for me that sets a fire in my blood again.

Figuring out where he likes my fingers the most is easy, given the way he tenses and twitches and moans, so I rub that spot in quick little presses and suck gently at his foreskin, and he takes a deep, hitching breath and whines, and _god_ I could spend forever memorizing all the tiny little ways his body moves under me. 

He likes it when I finally fulfill my hazy daydreams and nibble on his perfect hip bone, and he likes it even more when I slide my tongue between these piercings too, enough that his precome starts to slick his dark, lovely happy trail. I follow this with my teeth too, down to the warm base of his cock. He buries his fingers in my hair and tugs gently, so I peer up at him again, and good _god_ he looks amazing. 

His flush is so dark now, and his expression is so _needy_ and so undone that I can’t help but moan and lean up to him to kiss him again, and some more, even as my hands work a little faster. Breathless moans against my lips encourage me, coming freely now. God. 

“H-hey, Marco…”

“N-nnh?”

I lick aimlessly at his parted lips just to swallow another sigh, then lean back so he can see the effect his reactions are having on me. It takes him a second, but he grins widely when he finally notices that I’m fucking rock solid again and wiggles enough to dislodge my fingers. “C-come on, yeah,” he murmurs, slapping his hands over the condoms and tearing another one off. He opens it with his teeth and sits up to roll it on for me this time. 

I’m closer to the lube, so I grab it and slick it over my cock kind of haphazardly, but it’s enough. He pulls me back over him, wrapping his beautiful thighs around my waist to pull me down and murmur, “Go as hard as you like. I like it.”

Good thing I just fucking came, because I probably would have come just from that all over again if not. I just moan into his throat and look down to watch what I’m doing. I steady myself like he had, pressing against him, _god,_ and the slow slide inside of him is no less mind-blowing than the first time. Fuck.

I muffle my stuttering moan against his shoulder when I sink all the way in, his legs shaking around me. Oh.

I’d thought I could have some self-control.

Nope.

My first shaking thrust after I’ve cooled off a bit is slow and kind of even, but it takes barely any time at all before I’m reduced to a moaning, whimpering, whining wreck, barely holding myself above him on my elbows while I buck my hips against him and try not to fucking lose my mind over how _tight_ he is still, how _good,_ how much louder and more desperate his moans are when he hitches his knees just a little higher and arches his back just so.

Oh god.

I’m so glad he’s okay with me losing control like this. So glad. Because I cannot help the way I’m ramming my cock into him, grinding into him when I lose my rhythm, my hands fisting in the sheets until I move one to grab his side and just _oh_ squeeze and slide my palm back to his poor abused hip. He’s crying out for me too, my name and oh and _more, Jean,_ and all I can do is moan for him in return instead of telling him how perfect he is and how good he feels and how bad I want him and how bad I wanna feel him come, _oh._

We’re not so much kissing as much as swallowing each other’s sounds, but god my name tastes amazing on his lips, especially with the taste of his sweat and his moans and his _everything,_ everything I could ever possibly need in life and more.

I’m constantly on the edge, hyper-aware of the way he’s tightening around me, but I can’t fall over, not quite yet. But it’s fucking _insane_ how close I am, and I tell him so, and somehow he understands my stuttered words enough to whine, “T-touch me, Jean, p-please I’m right there…”

Shifting my hand from his hip to his cock and squeezing makes him cry out and arch up against me, his eyes squeezed shut from pleasure that _I’m_ giving him, oh fuck, so I jack him off in quick firm strokes that I don’t even try to match to my pounding, grinding thrusts. I remember, though, and I gently squeeze the sensitive head right before I pull his foreskin back and slide my thumb through his slit again, and my reward for remembering this is perfect. So perfect.

He arches off the bed, stuttering cries spiking into “Jean Jean _Jean, ‘m coming, coming—_ ” and _oh,_ he is. And he’s tightening around my cock.

And I am breathless.

Even as his cries fill the room around us, I muffle mine against his throat and slam my hips against him until I can’t anymore, until the world greys out around me and I bury myself inside of him and hold him close to me and try to remember how to drag my head out of the clouds.

It takes a long while before either of us stops shaking in time with the other, his arms and legs still tight around me, my hand still trapped between us. He nudges me after a moment, though, enough to bring my stuffed head up so that he can kiss me messy and lazy and fucked-out, _god._

I could fucking cry.

\--

Marco apparently gets happy and cute and giggly when he comes. I lay in his bed for hours after we peel away from each other and clean up, watching him talk and asking him questions whenever they crop up, and lying beside him and listening to his strong, even heartbeat while he uses his fingers to draw diagrams in the air above us.

I’m so goddamn in love with him.

I haven’t told him yet, though, because I have no idea when that shit’s appropriate in a relationship and I don’t really wanna freak him out with how hard and how bad I have fallen for him.

So I let him trace the stars through the ceiling and kiss him when he looks at me to make sure I’m still awake, and I try to memorize every movement of his lips that leads to that blinding smile with my one-eye deficit.

There’s no way he can look into my eyes and not see how bad I have it for him. He’s gotta. Dude’s so damn observant. Every time, though, he just smiles warmly and blushes and nuzzles me while he holds me a little tighter.

When he falls asleep with his forehead leaned against mine, wrapped safe and tight around me, I say ‘fuck it’ and fall asleep too, even knowing the risks that involves.

His dreams may be dangerous to him and possibly fatal to me, but I will protect him from whatever his broken, disjointed subconscious tries to hit him with. 

Tonight, he sleeps soundly, and he dreams of sheep making coffee the whole night through.


	8. The Ties That Bind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'” -- Hunter S. Thompson
> 
> The brevity of a blessing is too often overcome by the gravity of a curse, and truly understanding shit like those words is a confusing and horrifying mix of both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a [tumblr](http://avoidingavoidance.tumblr.com)
> 
> special thanks to tumblr user [gonnagetnaked](http://gonnagetnaked.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> [it's you i like](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-DsZMKYXzI)

He stretches beside me with a sleepy little squeak. I grumble and bury my face in his hair. It’s bright, far too bright for me to open my eyes yet, so I just wrap myself around Marco. 

Soft lips find mine, his fingers tracing down my cheek. My arms wrap tighter around his waist and pull him closer. Well, one arm does. The one under him is long-numb from his weight, but that’s okay. He hums, quiet and content, and he kisses me softly until his feather-light touches lull me back to sleep.

Dreamless sleep is relaxing, albeit lonely.

\--

Quiet singing lures me out of my daze. “But it’s you, I like…” Something smells like… coffee. “The way you are right now…” It’s warm in here, warm and even brighter than before. “The way down deep inside you, not the things that hide you.” I bury my face in the pillow to hide from the sunlight. It smells like him, so of course I burrow further. “Not your toys, they’re just beside you…” Marco’s voice is so sweet. 

Braving the light, I crack my good eye and blink away the sleepy blurs until I can clearly see him humming and swaying while he pokes at something on the stove. His apartment’s filled with lazy afternoon sunbeams. 

I tug the pillow over my bum eye to keep it safe. Migraine’s not a good way to start the day. 

“But it’s you, I like, every part of you…”

I smell the bacon now, strong enough to overpower the coffee. Christ, I never believed in angels. 

The carefully arranged groups of roughly-hewn minimalist wooden creatures on my aunt’s TV stand in Kansas were never enough to convince me. Days, weeks spent in the smell of bread searching for the ends of the blazing sky until my mother called me in for the night never told me tales of winged guardians. The grace my mother said over our dinner when we came back to Trost spoke volumes of the empty seat at the head of our table but none of a power willing to protect me or my family. 

Lying in a field of dry wheat, sitting in my stiff Sunday suit, and mumbling ‘amen’ before I stabbed my fork into a potato all felt the same to me as the cloudy birthday party in the park that no one came to but the kid who lived next door. 

Misplaced. Alone. No higher powers nor mortal souls to find comfort in. Just… emptiness. 

Yet here stands an angel wearing boxers with fat happy bees on them, singing Mr. Rogers while he makes breakfast at two in the afternoon. 

Between Eren and Marco there is finally a place for me, where none of me pokes out at strange or disjointed angles. I didn’t even need to find God to come here. 

I wonder if Marco is religious.

“I hope that you’ll remember, even when you’re feeling blue…” He cracks some eggs into another pan, tossing the shells fluidly into the sink. “That it’s you I like. It’s you, yourself.” The eggs sizzle and pop while he jabs at them and sips his coffee. The way his nose twitches tells me even from here that it’s still too hot. “It’s you. It’s you—” Salt and pepper. “—I—” Shakes his hand when bacon grease pops at him. “—like.”

Before he can turn around, I bury my face back into the pillow and try to scrub my eyes so I look sleepy instead of whatever expression I’m actually wearing.

Probably that of a man who knows that there are one hundred and fifty-one days left to somehow cram all of Marco’s immense shining light into my pockets and hope to god that he’s there with me when I finally find out what’s on the other side of this robbery we call death.

The bed jostles and squeaks the way beds do when full-grown dudes who are definitely _not_ as light as they look cannonball onto them, bouncing me out of my introspection. I resist, mostly just to be a pain, and groan as I hold the pillow tightly over my face to block out the sun.

“Mrnghhh.”

“Ah, yes, my zombie boyfriend rejoins the world of the living. Was it the coffee or the morning wood that revived you?”

I grimace at him from under the pillow, squinting at his beaming face from the safety of the shade, and yup. Morning wood tent indeed. I flush dark and give him a sheepish look. He just wiggles his eyebrows. Oh god.

Back into the pillow. 

Marco shows me then another of the infinite reasons he is the most perfect human being alive when he wiggles around, then under the blanket, then between my legs, and _wow._ Wow.

Wow.

\--

August passes hot and lazy, with Marco teaching me all kinds of amazing shit. The way his teeth feel nipping at my shoulder when he’s pulling me down hard on his incredible cock, for example. Among other things. Yeah.

It’s hot as shit the entire month. I hate it. Always have. There are a few scattered deaths here and there, but more and more people are coughing into handkerchiefs and more and more people are disappearing into the hospital’s quarantine. Still no real information. ‘Bird flu,’ say the whispers between tittering old people. Bullshit, I say.

Eren says nothing.

He’s been weirdly quiet the last few weeks. Always thinking, always frowning, but he won’t tell me why. He just shakes his head and makes something up. We sit in my apartment while Marco’s at work, and I play lazily and hum to myself, and he just stares moodily at the ceiling. When he gets restless, we go and skip rocks or spar in the field, although the heat lately has been making it hard to wrestle him during the day.

Nights I mostly spend with Marco, and Eren encourages it strongly. I can’t quite put my finger on it. I wonder all the damn time why, when I stride into my apartment some mornings like fucking Don Jon and rip my clothes off to shower the sex smell off of me, Eren’s mood lightens.

“I’m just glad you’ve stopped being such an intolerable asshole. Getting laid does you some good.”

I flip him off over the shower door, and he cackles, and both of us are better for it.

Armin comes down to keep him company some nights, leaving behind stacks of books that he finds in his endless archiving. An entire wall of my apartment has just become a muted mosaic of tomes from floor to ceiling. They leave that library smell of yellowed pages and ink, of worn leather covers and dry paper. It’s nice. Almost homey. 

Armin’s been dropping by less and less, though, so I really do worry that Eren might be getting lonely. Maybe I should get a dog or something. Can dogs see Death? Will they play fetch with the grim reaper himself? Who knows.

He follows me around the grocery store whenever I shop for dinner-type shit and mocks my vegetable choices knowing full well that I can’t exactly wing an eggplant at him without someone thinking I’m unstable. My eye-rolling muscles are starting to ache, and I think he might have busted a rib laughing at me, but we manage. He broke a damn jar _howling_ the one time he asked if Marco had replaced the stick up my ass with his dick yet and I pulled his branch out of my back pocket and tried to be covert in my attempt to snap it. 

Besides, I get him back for his crap. Whenever he gets moody at home, I sit on his knees and loudly sing him songs about what a fucking douchebag he is, which somehow makes him laugh. Fucking weirdo with a weird sense of humor. 

We get along in our own way. It’s nice, these hot, bright days that we fuck around like I’m not living on borrowed time.

On humid, easy nights I let Marco put together himself just what he’s doing to me. He only has to look me up and down a certain way to leave me awkwardly hiding a boner. 

We don’t always make love, though. Not every night. Some nights Marco comes home and he’s flustered from work, or he’s in the zone in his research, or he’s just plain sleepy, so I bully him into letting me make him dinner while he vents to me, and I play for him after if he’s in the mood for it. (He always is.) 

Work is another thing he’s started to share with me, which I’m glad about. I understand more than I thought, and sometimes he works through problems on his own just trying to explain them to me.

I kinda wonder why he never asks me about my work. Don’t get me wrong, I think I’ve fucking forgotten how computers work entirely, so I’m glad for it. Besides, coding is never entertaining for people who aren’t coders. It’s barely entertaining for people who are. I guess it’s for the better. But still.

He asks me about everything else under the sun, though, when he’s not bouncing ideas off me or telling me stories or trying to remember a joke Christa told him earlier. I’ve almost slipped up and talked about Eren more times than I can count. I hate having to hide part of myself from him, especially when he talks so freely about his best friend while I bite my tongue about mine.

These little discomforts are of no consequence, though, when we lie entwined in his bed late at night and seconds drag into insufficient hours while we kiss each other slowly and the rest of the sleeping universe ceases to exist at all.

\--

Marco’s out late on August 27th, getting some after-work beers with his coworkers. I’m glad he hasn’t given up spending time with his friends. He’s so lively, and he’s got so many of them. Christa, Erd, Gunther, this weirdo shaggy giant Mike, so on. 

I’m still avoiding Christa. I haven’t seen her since I brought her those flowers. Even with all that shit Erwin said about how I’ve been forgotten, I’m still nervous.

There is a reason for this. I’m not just being paranoid. Probably. 

When I was little, I had a hot temper. Still do. Up until the end of high school, though, I kinda took it out on everyone around me. That therapist had called it ‘externalizing behavior.’ Blowing my anger outwards, kind of thing. It’s another part of the anxiety. 

Christa told me that sometimes young boys with social anxiety tend to go overboard with their personalities. For people around them, they seem like they’re boisterous and aggressive, and they end up with reputations. 

It’s really just another way to express fear. All it does is make it worse. Especially when you notice that teachers and parents and other kids just get more and more pissed off.

So, one time in second grade I got into a huge fight with some douche in my class. I gave him a black eye and got suspended. After being forced to talk to this therapist who treated me like I was seven months old instead of seven years, I came back to school, gave a half-hearted apology, and promptly forgot all about it for the rest of my existence.

Until I went to see Christa for my first real session. 

I sat down in the waiting room on the third floor and scrubbed my sweaty palms down my thighs. There were some magazines on the table, a grungy window letting in lame grey daylight, and some fake flowers in a truly horrendous glass vase. 

The vase kind of kicked me in the gut, and not just because it was a truly aggressive shade of orange. I’d seen the goddamned thing before. 

I was in the same clinic I’d come to so some crass old dude in bad tweed could diagnose my bruised knuckles and my sour face, and that same hideous vase had followed me. 

And then for the first time in fifteen years I remembered that I’d beaten some kid to a pulp on the floor of my classroom because he’d spent the last four hours whispering to me that I was a fat freak.

That day in second grade was my first panic attack.

Christa told me that I have social phobia and panic disorder.

I couldn’t hear her over that vase in the other room.

So, keeping in mind that an innocuous but ugly inanimate object could remind me of a memory long since lost just by sitting in a corner, who’s to say that seeing my face wouldn’t perhaps jog any memory Christa’s ever had of sitting across from me and guiding me on my journey to being okay? What power could possibly prevent her from staring up at me and knowing that I died months ago?

So I’m avoiding her while I date her best friend.

It could only work for so long.

Marco’s still buzzed when he knocks on my door later that evening, interrupting the fearsome chokehold I have Eren in. He’d been bugging me. I knee him until he rolls off of me with a groan, running my hands through my mussed hair in an attempt to not look like a mess, and when I open the door Marco grins at me.

“Hiya,” he says, hands resting easily in his pockets.

“Hey.”

Licking his lips, he reaches out and tugs me out of my apartment by my shirt, so I follow him back over to his, where he pushes me onto the couch and plops himself right in my lap. “So, Jean,” he starts, reaching up to fix my hair some more. “You know how I kinda talk a lot when I drink?”

I lace my fingers behind his back and blink up at him, nodding.

“And you know how I talk a whole lot about things I like a whole lot?” He smiles down at me, and I nod again, thinking about all the things he gets excited and chatters about. I’ve learned a lot from his energetic rambles. He’s much smarter than he lets on. “Well, d’you know what I like a whole lot lately?”

Humming, I play with the hem of his shirt and close my eyes to think for a second. He’s been pretty deep in his research lately. “Mmm, rural panic?”

“Well, that too.” I peek up at him again, and he grins. “See, when I wake up to get ready, there’s this really cute boy in my bed with me every morning.” My face grows hot, but I laugh at him, which earns me a kiss. “Anyway, I like him a whole lot, so I talked about him a little. Or maybe a lot.”

“I see,” I mumble, pulling him down to catch his lips again. “So I have to skip town now, huh?”

“Not quite,” he laughs, and he pulls back to rub his nose at me sheepishly, already looking apologetic. I quirk an eyebrow at him. “Say, are you, uh. Are you doing anything on Labor Day?”

“When the hell’s Labor Day?”

“I guess not, then.” He leans forward again and kisses me suspiciously tenderly, like he’s trying to butter me up. It’s totally working. I run my hands up his shirt, making him squeak and shiver at how cold my fingers are. 

“Spill.”

He sighs, then collapses next to me on the couch and stretches his legs over my lap. “My friends, uh. Kinda wanna meet you. So they told me to bring you to Erd’s Labor Day party on Monday.” He bites his lip, fiddling with his fingers. 

Parties. Fucking super. I swallow my nervousness, though, and attempt to look casual. “Okay.”

His gaze snaps back up to me, his eyes wide. “Y-yeah?”

I run my hands through my hair and slouch down on the couch, trying really really hard not to think about the last party I was at. “Yup.”

He’s silent for a while, and when I can’t pick at the hems of his pants anymore, I flick my gaze up to him, and his eyes are fucking _misty,_ what the fuck. Mine widen, and I feel myself flush. He moves back over me, though, and when he kisses me again, it’s soft and understanding and jeez. I wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his shoulder.

“Thank you, Jean,” he murmurs as he plays with my hair. I just nod against him.

\--

Parties never really were my thing, for obvious reasons. 

I mean, shit, the last one I was at went catastrophically bad, even by my standards. This one girl would not come off the fact that I wasn’t just staring into her stupid drunk eyes, and she berated me until I bummed a smoke off a coworker just so I could go outside to be alone for a while.

Yeah. That went well.

I sigh and move to sit on the low stone wall sectioning off Erd’s weird raised garden, holding my beer like a damn grail. There’s a decent amount of people here. I haven’t really been around people lately, aside from Marco and Eren, so it’s kinda fucking weird. Marco’s disappeared somewhere, mostly at my behest because his beer ran dry and he kept waving at his friends from across the fucking party. 

I’m not mad that he left me in my corner, hell no. He’s a social animal. I am too, I guess, just… significantly less so. He shouldn’t be chained to his loser wallflower boyfriend in the corner of the garden.

The balcony lurking above the patio is covered in people, some swaying to the weird hipster music that’s coming from the living room, some laughing and talking and telling jokes, some just hanging out and smoking or whatever. There are people down here too, although it’s much less crowded.

I take a swig of my beer, leaning back to stare up at the sky. Mostly clear night. It’s nice, probably one of the last nice nights before the rain sets in. 

“Jean!” My gaze falls back to the balcony, where Marco’s standing with—ohshit, Christa. I duck my head and raise my bottle, staring at my shoes. They both wave, I can sorta see it with my weird eye, but I don’t lift my head. I should’ve known she’d be here, it was dumb to ever think otherwise. Shit.

Running my hand through my hair, I knock the toes of my shoes together and consider ducking out. But Marco had seemed so happy when I agreed to come… dammit. I can’t risk Christa recognizing me, though. If she even can. I can’t say I trust this stupid reaper magic very much, not with this.

Marco’s shoes assert themselves into my space, and I open up and let him in with a smile.

“Hi,” I mumble, taking in his soft smile and the way he smells faintly like alcohol and something sweet. 

“Hiya.” He rests his hands comfortingly on my thighs and leans in to kiss me, which is much appreciated, if we’re being honest. 

“Having fun?”

“Mhm,” he murmurs, reaching up to lace his fingers behind my neck. “I haven’t seen some of the people here in a while, so it’s nice to catch up.” I hum around another mouthful of beer, resting one hand on his hip. “Kinda miss my trophy wife, though,” he teases, giving me a playful grin, to which I respond by poking him in the belly button. 

“If anyone’s arm candy, it’s you,” I laugh, leaning in to kiss him again. 

“Ooh, flattery,” he hums, playing with the little hairs on the back of my neck. I’d shaved it earlier, in interest of not looking like an overgrown train wreck. “One of Erd’s college friends was telling us about how he took a mud bath in the Dead Sea while he was traveling through the Middle East last year. I just want you to imagine that for a second. Full-submersion _mud bath._ ”

I think about it for as long as it takes me to imagine salty mud shit up my ass, then shake my head to try and shudder that image away. “Fuck, dude. Better him than me.”

“I know,” Marco giggles, swaying between my knees and biting his lip. “I’m kinda jealous, though, in a way.”

“Next time it rains,” I start, trying not to break into laughter mid-sentence, “We’ll find you a nice big mud puddle and you can roll around in it for a while. How’s that?”

“Eww,” he blurts, smacking my thigh lightly even as he laughs that big booming laugh. “It’s not the same, you nerd. Besides, it’s not the mud wedgie I’m jealous of.”

“Then what?” I finish my beer and set it on the rock beside me, then move to lace my fingers at the small of his back. 

“I dunno.” He moves closer, leaning his forehead against mine and playing with the buttons on the loose flannel I’m wearing. “I haven’t done much traveling, you know? I went straight to grad school from undergrad, so I guess I just get a little shifty when I see all these people my age who’re doing crazy stuff like getting buried in mud across the world.” He laughs again, fisting his hands in my shirt lightly. “It’s stupid, I know.”

I speak so I don’t just fucking burst into tears. “It’s not stupid.”

Marco’s got a fucking bucket list, of course he fucking does. He has crazy shit that he’s never done just because of whatever, and he has places he wants to see and things he wants to do. He’s looking at me, eyes wide, and it fucking kills me to see a faint reflection of myself in him. 

I spent my entire life being afraid of living until the option was taken from me. And now, cursed with this limited-run second chance, I’ve finally fucking figured out what life is for, and I’ve finally figured out how much time I wasted.

And there, in Marco, is this same little boy who’s afraid to live and hides his desires underneath the cover of ‘later, later, later.’

Only Marco doesn’t have a later. Because I’m gonna take it from him. In one hundred and twenty-one days, my second chance ends, and I have to take him with me to save him from becoming something horrifying.

“Jean, are you—”

“It’s not stupid,” I repeat, trying to clear the tremor out of my throat. “What’s stopping you?” He blinks at me, already opening his mouth to give me the money excuse, the school excuse, the time excuse… I know it all. By heart. I cut him off by pulling him to me and kissing him softly, leaving him enough room to protest if he wants. He doesn’t. “What’s stopping you from doing any of the weird, crazy shit you’ve ever wanted to do?”

He blinks at me, pulling away slightly, and as he considers me, he bites his lip. 

“Even the stupid little things,” I mumble, staring right back into him. 

I’ll let Marco live his remaining days as much as he can. I’ll encourage him to do all the shit he’s been scared to do, that he’s been putting off.

I can’t let him be afraid to live. Not even the tiniest bit.

He’s still considering me, which kinda makes me fidget. Shit. I probably could have been a little more tender with this. Or less fucking weird.

Before I can backpedal, or clam up, Marco’s laughing, and he’s grinning so bright and sunny, and then he’s gone.

Oh god, what if he just hops on a plane to Israel without me. 

I swallow nervously and hop down from the little wall, grabbing my beer and moving to toss it in the recycling. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I look around, then up at the balcony, where I find my boyfriend talking insanely fast at Christa, who looks confused, then suspicious, then surprised, and then she’s laughing too. Oh god, what if he’s taking Christa to Israel too? 

Dammit, Marco, I didn’t mean for you to leave the country. 

He disappears after hugging Christa tightly, whirlwinding away like the fucking tornado thing from Looney Tunes, and before I can hide my face Christa’s leaning over the balcony and staring straight at me. Oh fuck. I feel my eyes widen, but they’re locked on hers. Oh fuck. 

Christa, please don’t recognize me, please… 

“Be good!” Then she’s gone. I’m so confused. Ugh.

I scrub my hands down my face, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes, and when I pull them away again, Marco’s standing in front of me and holding out a few jello shots. Good lord.

“Christa’s super drunk, but she approves of you,” he says, jiggling the stupid jello at me. “C’mon, c’mon.”

Marco must be the infectious kind of crazy, because I down the three blobs he’s waving at me without chewing, and his grin widens and spreads to me too. Then he presses a thick steel baseball bat against my chest.

“Wh-what—”

“Come on!” He grabs one of my hands, ducking to pick up—what, a box of cheap, shitty canned beer? And then he’s pulling me after him and laughing, laughing, the sound infectious and wonderful. 

He holds my hand and leads me at full-tilt out of the garden, through the side yard, and onto the street, and he doesn’t stop there. He just runs. 

My heart’s pounding, but it’s the good kind of pound. The kind that comes from a growing buzz and a warmth in my chest and excitement bubbling up in my stomach. The kind that comes from Marco dragging me down some street in the middle of the night, carrying a baseball bat and a bunch of shitty beers and not knowing what the fuck’s going to happen next, but whatever it is, it’s gonna be weird, crazy shit.

It doesn’t take long to reach the old baseball field behind the middle school, the one that’s closed for summer but that isn’t really gated in because there’s no point. He runs until he hits the pitcher’s mound, then he pushes me and the bat toward home base.

“M-Marco, what—”

“I hope you’re good at baseball,” he says, and when I turn back to him, he’s grinning like an absolute _ass_ and shaking the hell out of a can of beer. Then he pitches it at me. I get it. 

Weird, crazy shit indeed.

I wasn’t ready for the first one. It beans past me and clangs on the chainlink, falling to the dirt with a thick _thud,_ and I’m already laughing.

I’m ready for the second one, though. He gives me his best ‘serious pitcher’ face, letting me wind up for it, and when he pitches it at me, I swing for it. And I hit it.

Fuck being afraid to live. Fuck being afraid of being weird and of being afraid to do something insane. Fuck everything that kept me chained to the ground when I was alive.

The bat hits the can with a loud _crack_ and it goes spinning off to the side, spraying beer through a split from the pressure in a wide, arcing spiral. 

Marco laughs as he hops between his feet and shakes another can, the fucking _fire_ in his eyes burning into me from here. 

Fuck dying. 

I crack the bat against the next can he wings at me and I’m fucking _alive_ with it.

For now, for tonight, I’m free. We both are.

Marco pulls his keys out, fishing out another cheap beer and digging the sharp key to his apartment into the side of the can, and this dude fucking _shotguns_ the shit while I laugh until my ribs hurt. I’m not let down. Marco crushes the can and makes the _best_ goddamn face at the shitty taste, noisily voicing his distaste. I drop the now-dented bat and grab the downed can behind me, somehow avoiding the foamy spray that explodes like a damn volcano from it when I open it. Until I spray it into my mouth, anyway.

Yeah, it’s shitty, and kinda tastes like metal, but I can’t stop laughing about it. Neither can he.

I stand and run behind him, ducking out of his view when he turns to look for me, and I give him a good second of being confused before I spring onto his back and wrap my legs around his waist and open another well-shaken can over the both of us.

It’s a fucking wonder we don’t get arrested.

A pair of full-grown men sprinting around the ball field, spraying beer on each other, him piggybacking me at frankly frightening speeds before he stops and spins until we fucking fall over, cackling like hyenas, _free._

We have the good sense to dump the thoroughly slaughtered beerball cans into a bin before he grabs the rest of the box and tears off into the night, whooping. Of fucking course I sprint after him.

He’s better at me on the monkey bars, but I kick his ass on the swings, watching him admire my sick air from where he’s chugging another shitty beer on top of the jungle gym. He laughs at me when I fuck up my dismount and eat shit, but he laughs so hard he almost falls off his damn perch, so we’re even.

By the time we’ve killed the beer, we’re fucking _toasted_ and he’s sprinting across the field with me on his back again, no idea where we’re going and no concerns for shit like that. I let go of his shoulders and reach my hands in the air, hollering because I fucking can, and in short order I fall off his ass again and bring him down with me in a pile of wheezing laughter and beer-soaked clothes.

I roll over him and grin down at him, still breathing hard, and he laughs again, loud and sweet. The grass around us is a little wet from some rain earlier, and it’s teeming with fireflies flaring bright in the low light, and Marco’s laughing and holding me, and it’s goddamn perfect.

He licks his lips, lapsing into giggles, his hands hot on my cheeks when he grips my face and grins like the fucking sun.

“Yup,” he finally manages, his thumbs tracing over my cheeks and sticking. “I was right.”

“’Bout what?” 

Marco’s good at fucking blowing my mind.

“I, uh,” he starts, looking shy for a bare second. “I love you.”

I’m dizzy from it. 

My eyes slide shut, already burning, and I collapse against him so I can bury my face in his neck. Feels like I’m floating, and not just from the buzz or the rush. Just, fucking. Floating here with perfect Marco who loves me and whom I love. Desperately. 

Fuck dying. I’m living.

I catch my floating head and lean up to kiss Marco deeply, pouring myself into him and drinking up the little noise he makes, and when I pull back I put voice to the words that I’ve repeated in my head a thousand times a day since I realized it myself.

“I love you,” I whisper, right before I kiss him again, and tell him again, and before I know it he’s wrapped around me and we’re laughing again and kissing and saying it over and over against each other. Giddy and breathless.

We make our way back to his apartment somehow, holding hands and sharing laughs and kisses and murmuring the words like we’d never grow tired of them. I know I won’t. How could I, with only one hundred and twenty days left to tell him?

I’m home, pressed against him in the shower. I’m home, playfully toweling off his wet hair and tugging at his cowlicks and dodging his pinching fingers.

I’m home, his fingers twined tightly with mine as he murmurs my name against my lips and moves in perfect sync with me, as he repeats the words to me over my hitching moans.

I’ve come home.

\--

Marco’s incredibly hung over the next morning, as am I, but he still manages to make the grown-up choice and get out of bed for work. He kisses me warmly before he leaves, whispering the words in my ear again before he slides on sunglasses with an exaggerated groan. I just laugh at him from under the pillow, where my swollen head’s safe from the too-bright sun.

I wait until the door’s closed behind him and the safe quiet has filled the air again to squeeze the pillow against my face and kick my feet like a fucking teenaged girl.

Fuck dying.

Not like the sentiment means anything to the inevitable darkness, but at least it knows now that I’m not going meekly into it with my head hanging and my feet dragging under the weight of my regrets.

\--

“I’m definitely not complaining. I guess I just didn’t expect it, you know?” I pause and fling a rock over the water, skipping it through dense morning fog. 

Eren skips a rock far better than mine. The river’s stiller than usual today. “What’s not to expect? You love him, he loves you.”

“Yeah,” I mumble, kicking at the bank to find another good rock. Hopefully there’ll be some excuses there, too.

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, we like. _Say it._ Now.” I don’t look at him, but I can feel his burning ‘you’re an idiot’ stare digging into the back of my head. 

“Are you seriously that deprived, dude?”

“Shut up.” I find a good, smooth rock. Nice and flat. “I guess it’s just faster than I expected. I didn’t even notice it happening.” He’s got his key between his lips again when I turn back to him, poking at the wet rocks with his toes. I can _feel_ him churning something over, something that won’t make it past his lips, which is growing more bothersome as each day passes. “I mean, I’ve only known him for, what, eight months? Even less than that since I came back, and we’ve only been together for a little over a month.” I shrug, scratching at the back of my head. 

“You sound like you’re complaining.”

“God no.” I run my hands down my face, considering my words. 

“You trust him, yeah?”

“Of course I do.”

Eren stares at the fog for a while, then turns to look at me. “No one ever expects to fall in love, dude. It just happens. Why should it have to happen over a long time?” Crouching, I fold my arms on my knees and peer at the river again. He continues with his weird immortal wisdom. “I don’t get it. Some of these people, they’ve been in love for decades and they’ve never said shit because they’re afraid of losing the person. They die before they say the words.”

The feeling of biting my tongue is familiar to me. So is the feeling of blurting out shit I really shouldn’t say. I can’t really say anything in defense or denial of unrequited love.

Eren sighs and tosses another rock, which just sinks lamely. “There was a time once where loving someone wasn’t more frightening than dying, you know.” I blink up at him, taking in the way his brow furrows and his mouth curves into a soft frown. “Then again, you’ve always been a weirdo.”

Just as I’m about to get pissed, he looks down at me, and a weird feeling comes over me. There isn’t a word for it, as usual. I just feel… old. Super old. Exhausted, brimming with unspoken words and ingrained emotions so constant that I’d stopped questioning them. 

I also feel like I’ve been here before.

Not here explicitly, of course I’ve been by the fucking river. I mean here, this situation, this feeling, Eren looking down at me with eternity on his face and that key hanging out of the corner of his lips. Him wondering why we’re all so afraid, wondering when we started holding ourselves tighter and making our own lives so difficult.

And me. Suddenly realizing that maybe he fears nothing because at one point there was something so horrifying before him that nothing else could possibly compare, let alone something like love or duty.

“Eren,” I croak, coming to stand, my knees and my hands numb and weightless. “How old are you?”

He feeds me the same answer as last time, when I asked him back in January. “Old enough.”

This time, I’m not satisfied. My voice trembles. “Were you ever human?”

“Yes.”

I fell in love with Marco like it was the most natural thing in the world, and I feel at home with him. Armin knew my name before I ever told him, and what kinds of books I like, and where to find me when I’m scared. 

_’When people die, they go home for a while—’_

Eren’s felt like a brother to me since we shared a cigarette on the roof of the hospital the night I reaped my first soul.

_’—And when it’s time for them to come back, they do.’_

It’s barely a whisper when I ask, “Have we ever met?”

The silence stretches between us, the chirping of birds and the sound of the water muted by the gravity of it. 

Instead of answering, he holds his hand out to me. I know the only way I’ll find out is if he shows me. I’m unreasonably terrified by that idea.

I take his hand anyway. He squeezes my fingers before he pulls.

\--

We’re back in limbo when I open my eyes again, balanced on uneven roots and facing oblivion. Squinting, I look around, then over to Eren, but he’s not looking at me. He’s staring at the tree behind me, his face lit by this lifeless golden radiance, and already his eyes are filling with tears. 

_“Eren—”_ I hear. Annie’s voice. Another bizarrely familiar face, one that I’ve never met, and her ankou too.

I turn slowly.

The tree is a silhouette in Purgatory’s enormous, blazing harvest moon, casting its shadow dark over me but not Eren. Annie’s there, trying to pull the other girl away, the girl with a blank face and short black hair and skin tanned dark from the Cairo sun. So different than she was before, but not so different from how she was eons ago.

Wait.

Oh, _oh—_

My eyes fucking cross when the migraine sets in. I feel overcome. I am overcome. Pressing my shaking, sweating palms to my head does nothing to calm the thunderstorm crashing in every corner of my existence, and covering my ears does not protect me from the immense ringing that liquefies my brains. 

Her face, her _face,_ her sharp grey eyes that barely flickered with emotion the first time she saw me, when I was young and stupid and told her she had pretty hair—those eyes that warmed in the humid summers we spent together in a new world, the eyes that mirrored hers, that opened when hers slid shut for the last time when we were still too young for this—

A hundred times I’ve loved her, a thousand times I’ve met her, different places and times she’s murmured my names and touched my hand—

But none of these memories are _mine—_ I’ve never been here, I’ve never seen her, I’ve never held her—

I feel a root against my forehead as I gasp into the silence, my body wracked with pain but not from collapsing, and I hear voices and words but I don’t understand any of it, and then the world is black.

\--

My eyes flutter open in the dark silence of my bedroom.

I’d been dreaming. A strange dream, something about the President. Well, perhaps it’s not too strange. I’d been talking to Mother right before bed about President Washington’s swearing-in just earlier this year. She’d told me near-tearfully how lucky I am to witness such incredible history.

“I remember like it was yesterday, Eugene, oh how lively the city was…”

When Mother pulls out the handkerchief, I generally do my best to find other pastimes. I do hate to see Mother cry, even if it’s an expression of her devotion to this land we’ve barely begun to call our own.

Dear William agrees about Mother’s tears, and his wide yawns in my lap had allowed me to excuse myself from the drawing room to lay him to sleep.

Now, I am woken again in the darkness by his cries. Oh, he’d been doing so well at sleeping through the night…

Summoning the nursemaid to soothe him would invariably be simpler, but now that I’ve awoken, I feel restless again. I’ve been sleeping worse and worse since my bed grew cold at the start of the year. Perhaps it is loneliness. 

Drawing my housecoat closed over my nightgown, I sneak from my room to his and shut the door behind me.

His cries cease as soon as he sees me, as soon as I pull him gently from his crib and hold him to my chest with a soft smile. Mother will scold me, either for abandoning sleep so early in the night or for reserving my smiles for him and him alone this cold year. I can’t help it, really. If not for him, I imagine I would have no smiles to share at all. 

After all, even in this bitter loneliness, should not a good father show utter devotion to his son?

I look upon my son’s tearstained face, and the bubble holding this insanity together fucking shatters like glass.

I don’t have a fucking son, my name is certainly not fucking _‘Eugene,’_ and Washington hasn’t been the fucking president in two hundred years. Also I do not wear a fucking dress to bed. Nor do I own a bed anymore. 

_Nor do I have a fucking son what the actual fuck._

This body is mine, but lankier than I remember, like when I was in high school. I also don’t have any control over it. Which is probably good, because whether this thing is my son or not (it isn’t), I probably shouldn’t drop it. Him. Whatever. Fuck.

The thing I’m riding moves across the room and sits in a chair, setting the baby thing in his lap. My lap. _Fuck._ I’m so lost.

My lips are moving, murmuring to the kid. Even if I’m an extremely concerned spectator, I feel relaxed. Sort of. I’m not panicking, anyway, but this is a genuinely unacceptable sort of hallucination.

“Is your sleep troubled, little one?” The thing—the kid—bubbles and stares with wide greyish eyes. Not my eyes, but those of his mother. Don’t ask me how I know that. I’m done trying to logic my way through this one. “Perhaps you are as lonely as I.” It— _he_ —grips my fingers with his tiny little hands and wavers in my lap. Curiously strong for an infant of only six months. “It pains me, little one, but it seems I can only remember your dear mother’s face when I look upon you. You’re lucky to have taken her features, rather than mine.” 

Ah, the bulletproof Jean Kirschtein self-esteem. Nice to see it apparently transcends time. Fuck.

My body slumps back into the chair, my free fingers tracing his tiny knuckles, his chubby little wrists, his bizarrely soft skin. All the little scars and marks my hands had accumulated in my regular life are gone, but my nails are still chewed to bleeding. 

“I wish I could remember her more clearly, Billy-goat.” Oh what the fuck—“I miss her painfully. I won’t ever blame you, though.” More spit bubbles. “When you’re older, I doubt I will tell you that she gave her life to bring you to me. If you’ve taken any part of me at all, which I couldn’t advise—” Please tell me I don’t sound this stupid all the goddamn time. “—I do not doubt that it would be my sadness.”

I’m going to bash my head against a wall for about an hour if I ever get to go home to my own body. This is fucking painful. And stupid. And confusing. I have yet to figure out why the hell I’m here.

Something—perhaps the faint shine to my son’s now-dribbling saliva—prevents me from feeling the usual anger or panic, though. Babies must have the same kind of black magic as therapists. I pull the sleeve of my stupid coat thing over my hand and wipe gently at the drool. Gross. 

“Tonight is rather lonelier than usual, Billy-goat.” My body sighs, while I’m still busy groaning about my son’s stupid nickname. “My two best friends have gone ahead without me, but at least I have you.” I toy gently with the black hair covering his head, insanely soft and wispy. “You have her face and his name, as much as I made fun when we were little.” My finger pokes gently at his chubby cheek, which wrings a smile out of him. I can’t help but feel soothed by it. “William Beauregard Kirschtein.”

Wow. That is a _blindingly_ stupid name. Shame, alternate reality me. _‘Eugene.’_ Jesus.

I stand, slinging my kid onto my bony hip like I’ve done it a thousand times, and then we’re moving through a pitch-black house. The kid fists his little Michelin-man hands in my clothes, then seems distracted by something around my neck. He tugs on it right as I open a door into a cool, dewy night.

The moon is huge and bright, offering the only light to the scene, and its shine illuminates the chain the kid’s pulling on. It holds a thin metal cross and a teeny little gold band meant for an incredibly narrow finger. The way my gut churns makes me think it might be my late wife’s. One of my two best friends, then my wife, then the mother of my child, then dead.

Jesus Christ.

I mill through the wet grass, letting him play with the ring and coo at me, looking from him to the starry sky as we walk through this fucking enormous lawn we’ve got. Maybe I’m rich in this existence. Probably not.

“Mother wants to take you into the city tomorrow to show you off to all of her friends at church,” I murmur, stopping to gently remove the ring from his drooly mouth. “I don’t care much for the city. Those people pride themselves on being open. They say they didn’t build a wall around Philadelphia, and that makes them more welcoming.” I sigh and adjust the kid. “They fail to mention that every house has its own man-height brick wall around it, and that every church is fenced in with iron.” I pull up the collar on his weird little baby sweater thing, then move him so I can pull my coat around him and keep him warm against me. “They fear _something,_ Billy-goat, but it doesn’t seem to be the same thing as the other towns.”

Billy-goat burbles at me and kicks his little feet against my narrow stomach. I’m standing barefoot in wet grass in the middle of the night talking to a dripping infant.

Wow.

I live a sad enough life on my own, don’t I? Well, _lived._ Now I have to deal with this sorry motherfucker too? Purgatory sure is cruel. I want to go home, back to my own existence, back to my own rapidly dwindling second chance where I don’t have a son and I’m not so profoundly alone.

My body meanders around my house, and when we round the corner, I see a fucking huge tree resting atop a hill. Its roots trail far down the slopes until they disappear into the earth, and the branches extend endlessly into the stars, shining with moonlight and fireflies flitting between the leaves, and I’m suddenly painfully aware of where my image of limbo came from. This weird past life of mine, where I have a son and Washington is president and my wife and all my friends are dead.

I stop again and look down at my son, and finally my body is feeling that weird trepidation that I’ve been trying to convince it of since I landed in this meat sack.

My son looks so much like his late mother, who died at the dusk of last year and who looks like… the woman. Annie’s ankou. Nameless, beautiful, warmer here in this life than before or after this bizarre landscape outside of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia.

Two names for one person explode in my brains, violent with pain and shrieked from some ancient memory, sudden like a gunshot.

_Mikasa Ackerman._

_Matilda Kirschtein._

My head hurts. Myself and the rube I’m riding. We groan together, squeezing our eyes shut, and we hold our son closer and try to hide in his soft baby skin.

I’m in Philadelphia, in 1793, a scrawny teenager named Eugene, holding my infant son and being bludgeoned by my dead wife’s names in the moonlight shadow of the tree that sprouted and twisted into the image of my personal hell. A name I’m supposed to have forgotten mere months after she died in childbirth in the winter of her seventeenth year, despite having grown up by her side and marrying her and loving her devotedly, and a name I was never supposed to know at all.

Through the aching, stabbing pain, I look up at the great ash tree on the hill, and there stand two figures whispering between each other.

This guy’s never seen one, and I’ve barely seen the other, but between us there is a gut-wrenching understanding of both of them.

The kid’s reaching out of my coat toward them, laughing for no real reason other than because he’s an infant who senses the woman that birthed him. She turns, her eyes wide and wet, and Eren stands behind her and doesn’t bother to stop the tears falling down his cheeks.

My mouth is moving. “M… Mika—Matilda?”

Oh my head hurts.

My dead wife stares, then she sobs, and then she slides down the hill and runs to us and is enveloped in my coat with me and our son.

“H-how—?”

She shakes her head, her black hair shining beautiful in the moonlight.

“You weren’t supposed to know. I came back to say goodbye.” She peers up at me, tears spilling down her pale porcelain cheeks. “Something awful is coming, Gene. Stay away from Philadelphia. Don’t you dare come near, nor our son.” She rests her cheek on his soft baby hair, staring up at me and slowly recovering her control. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll keep you both safe.”

Something tells me she’s trying to say the goodbye we never had the chance to say, but the gentle squash under my butchered name has apparently had more than enough of that bullshit. He straightens up, staring firmly down at the woman he loved and was forced to forget, and shakes his head.

“No.”

She frowns. I’m immune. And only a little terrified. Or a lot. She can kick my ass.

“Billy can stay with my mother. I’m coming with you.”

“Eugene.”

“ _No._ You don’t have to do this alone. You’re strong, stronger than I am, but you’re only one person.” I pause, then lean forward to kiss her forehead gently. She’s freezing. Living dead girl indeed. “Let me help you, Tilly.”

A few moments of staring at each other, joined only by the sounds of Billy-goat chewing on his mother’s long, pretty black hair, before she concedes defeat by kissing my cheek softly. 

My head’s spinning. Well, _Eugene’s_ isn’t, but mine fucking is, because I know where this goes and it is fucking _bad._

Eugene and his wife Matilda are going to go into the city and reap the damned that succumb to an unknown skin-yellowing plague, and Eren’s going to lose control and nearly eat them both.

I feel a hand fist in the back of my shirt. Mine, not Eugene’s, who’s leading his dead wife to the house to lay his now-snoring son to sleep, dress himself, and leave a note for his emotional mother before he vanishes from the countryside to learn the ins and outs of handling souls.

The hand yanks, and the world spins away from me, and _oh my head hurts._

The lights go out, but the image of the ash tree lit with fireflies is burned into my eyeballs, as it’s the last thing I catch before I squeeze my eyes shut and pray I don’t fucking puke.

\--

“What the _fuck—”_

“Jean, calm down—”

“No, fuck you, what the _fuck.”_

Eren rakes his hands through his hair, pacing agitatedly through Armin’s library. Matilda, now taller and tanner and fitter with much less hair, is sitting on the other armchair, staring at me with as much confusion as I’m showing her.

Armin comes up the tight stairs with a waving stack of books and sighs, looking between us. Annie’s just leaned against the balcony’s railing again. “Jean, do you remember the story I told you a few months ago? About Philadelphia?”

I laugh shrilly. He understands what I mean.

“Well, I guess the reason I couldn’t remember who the second person was is because it was you.”

“My name is not Eugene.”

Armin raises an eyebrow and sets the books on a rickety end table. “Hers isn’t Matilda.”

“So what the fuck.”

Eren’s got his face buried in his hands, Not-Matilda is glancing between Armin and Eren, I’m about to fucking cry from confusion, and Annie breaks the tension by snorting derisively.

I don’t like her.

She comes around anyway, standing between me and my not-wife. “You,” she says to not-wife, “Are Eren’s sister. Which you forget every time you’re reborn.” Oh god. Annie points to me next. “You and Mikasa were married in a past life, until she died giving birth to your kid and became Eren’s ankou in 1793.” Annie rounds on Eren next, who stands firm against her tiny fearsomeness. “You nearly ate them both because you lost your shit.” She considers us for a moment, then moves to sit on the windowsill. “And none of you were supposed to know any of this.”

I have a million objections to this, but somehow all I can manage is, “My name isn’t Eugene.”

Annie rolls her eyes impressively, and Armin sighs softly as he throws her a look. “Jean, your soul doesn’t exactly have a name. It changes from life to life.”

“Oh.”

Eren snorts, running his hands down his face.

“So, why now do we know?” Mikasa’s voice is quiet, steady, and it carries a thick, strange accent. She looks up at Armin for answers.

“Jean was starting to remember,” Eren mumbles, crossing his arms.

“The fuck I was!” I stand quickly, already looking for a fight. “I just asked if we met before, asshole, I wasn’t ready for the fucking reincarnation field trip.”

Eren rounds on me, on edge and equally unyielding. “I saw it on you, dick. You were putting it together. Marco, Armin, everything.”

I’m in his face. I can’t help it. “Don’t _fucking_ bring Marco into this shit, you assmonger, let him be. He’s got enough of your afterlife bullshit to deal with, and fucking _so do I!”_

“You don’t have _any fucking idea, do you—”_

_“Touch him and I will gut you—”_

“Jesus, guys,” Armin wheezes, squeezing between us and shoving. “Enough.”

I huff and turn away just so I can storm across the balcony. It’s either that or start a fight. A bad one. I lean against a bookshelf and close my eyes, just breathing and trying to get my heart to stop hammering.

“You’re not supposed to know right now that you’ve been alive before,” I hear Armin say, right before the thump of books fills the dry air. “But now you know, I suppose, so if you have questions you may as well ask them.”

“I’ve got one,” I yell, sticking my hand in the air. I don’t turn to the group. “Is it just that life, or have there been others?”

“What do you think?”

I don’t answer that. I just fidget. “Has Marco lived before this?”

“Are you only gonna ask dumb questions?”

I grab a book at random and wing it at Eren, my teeth grinding and my hands shaking. _“Fuck off—”_

“Eren, be reasonable,” Armin soothes, setting the book I’d chucked down on his pile. I hadn’t even seen him catch it. “He didn’t know any of this before you forced it on him, you know it’s supposed to wait until after he’s died.”

“I am dead.”

“No, _dead_ dead.”

I throw my hands in the air just to move my body. “Are there fucking _tiers_ of being dead?! Do I get a prize when I hit _dead dead_ dead?!”

Armin pinches the bridge of his nose and holds his hand up to me, clearly being tested by my shrill screaming. He gathers himself before he speaks again.

“Listen, there are a lot of humans now, but there are some souls that are trapped in a constant loop of being reincarnated. You, several others you know, and many that you don’t yet are in that loop. When you’re reborn, you forget your past lives, just to keep you sane. Unless, of course, _someone—_ ” Armin throws Eren such a dirty look that he actually recoils, which I do not hesitate to bark out a laugh at. “—does something that brings those memories back up. For you, Jean, seeing Mikasa under the ash tree that you perceive this plane as triggered your memories of that life together.”

I sigh and cover my eyes, hoping against hope that this is a dream. Unlikely.

“But sometimes memories aren’t that clear, you know?” I look at him again as he curls up in the chair I’d abandoned, leaning on the arm to face me and continue. “Sometimes it’s just a feeling of closeness, or nervousness. In Marco’s case, for you, it’s the former.”

“So we’ve known each other before this.”

“Yes, but try not to think about it. It’ll make you crazy, and it might make things worse for him.”

I sigh and look at my hands. My fingers, perfectly spaced so Marco’s fit between them, thinner but longer than his, one crooked from a years-old break. Armin’s right. Here and now Marco is all I need. Not some vision of the past, some person with the right face and the wrong name long dead and recycled.

Alright.

Looking back up at Armin, I try to look brave and not sweaty. I’m not sure that I succeed. “So what should I do now that I know?”

He shrugs. “Nothing, really. Do your job as you have been. Don’t mention it to Marco, though.”

I’m about to ask why when I remember that two hundred years ago I was a scrub with a zombie wife and a chubby son I called Billy-goat, and that Eren almost ate me and his hot sister trying to devour the souls from a plague that made Philadelphia into a ghost town. And that I was named _Eugene._

God only knows what horrifying Eugenes Marco has in his distant past. He doesn’t need that bullshit. Hell, I didn’t, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

My hair’s standing straight up from running my hand through it, but I do it again anyway.

“Armin,” Mikasa says suddenly, looking back up at him. He jumps, weirdly, and gives her this awkward side-eye. “What happened in Philadelphia?”

“Um.”

She narrows her eyes slightly, then reaches into her pocket to pull out her cell phone. I guess Googling ‘Philadelphia 1793’ can only give so many search results.

He sighs, then turns to face her fully. “There was an epidemic. A virus.”

Her eyes widen, and she turns to look at Annie, who looks grim. They have a rushed conversation in some other language, presumably Arabic, before Mikasa stands and stuffs her phone back in her pocket. She clicks her tongue, and Annie rolls her eyes again.

Eren stares at her. Mikasa looks over at him for a moment, but I’m guessing she’s not feeling the sibling vibe, because she doesn’t say anything. She just turns and walks over to Annie.

“U-uh,” I blurt, stumbling slightly in her direction. She turns to me, all insanely pretty and headstrong. “Thanks. For uh. Marrying me and stuff. Back then.”

Nice, Kirschtein. Nice.

She raises her eyebrows, and Annie barks out a laugh before she covers her mouth, and I can feel my face flushing dark.

“I’m sure there was a reason then,” Mikasa says, and in a rush of Annie’s laughter, they fall through the floor and fuck off back to Cairo. Fuck.

Armin’s got his face buried in his hands, and Eren’s just got this constipated-looking face that seems like he’s struggling between laughing and sobbing.

As for me, I hate everything and am sorely tempted to crack off Eren’s jaw and crawl into the void myself. I am going to drink myself into a coma. I glare bloody murder at the carpet and try to sort myself out.

In my desperate sorting, I remember suddenly that thankfully-not-wife is stationed in Cairo. Which is closed to air travel, if the TV wasn’t lying to me a fucking month and a half ago. Right before Marco and I. Oh. 

I feel better already.

No, wait. Cairo. Shit.

“Armin,” I grumble, and he peers up at me with badly-masked pity and amusement. “What’s happening in Cairo?”

No more mask. The color drains from his face, along with his smile.

He doesn’t say anything at first, just searching me for hesitance. I’m so done with everything that I’m about ready to choke Eren until Armin spills.

“Viral outbreak,” he replies finally, his voice quiet in the still air. “The whole city’s a quarantine zone.”

Oh. How about that.

Yeah, color drains from my face too. I feel sort of dizzy.

After I’m done choking on my tongue, I manage weakly, “What virus?”

He just shakes his head.

“We don’t know. All we know is that it doesn’t just infect the body.”

Eren comes back into the conversation. “What? How?”

Armin’s eyes fall to the floor. “It was designed. For the Purge.”

“What,” I start, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “So it’s culling mankind with the fucking sniffles?”

“You moron,” Eren grumbles, crossing his arms tightly. “Do you need us to hold your hand through everything? While it's killing the body, it’s infecting the souls.” I squint, and then I about shit myself. I don’t need to be babied through everything.

“Y-you mean their souls are rotting faster?”

Eren and Armin both nod, staring at me while I put it together. I think about how many damn souls lately have just been piles of snot instead of the shining lights they’re meant to be. 

And then I think about the squishy black corkscrew thing that woman in the graveyard called a soul. If you piled them on a table and asked me to close my eyes and squeeze, there’s no way I could tell you the difference.

Oh. Oh, no.

“They’ll become Lost.”

More nods.

In the basement quarantine ward of Trost General Hospital lie a dozen or more patients slowly succumbing to the Architect’s master plan, and as they waste away their souls become heavy, thick, black.

And then they’ll take form.

When those people die, their souls are going to jump out violent and hungry, and there is no force but me and Eren that can stop them.

“W-what about the shit with the angel and the demon? What about that? I thought keeping him safe would stop it, w-would prevent it—”

“It’s too late, Jean,” Armin says quietly. “The downfall’s already here. Nothing stopped the Architect from building this world, and nothing can stop them from destroying it.” He stares up at me. “All you can do now is your job. And just… keep him safe. Watch him closely. Do what you have to to save him.”

I stare back at the floor.

I think about the woman sniffling in the graveyard, right before she came at me with the blind intent of devouring me.

Last time I wandered around outside, half the town was hacking wetly into napkins and handkerchiefs.

Everyone in Trost is infected.

We are all doomed to become Lost.

Marco’s tongue wetting his lips, the little flash of teeth before he smiles. Blackened saliva running thick down his chin from his gaping, grinning mouth, all light gone from his hollow, hungry eyes while he guts some poor civilian and devours their beating soul.

I should have fucking reaped Marco Bodt.


	9. Moving Clocks Run Slow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just want to go home.

I imagine Marco’s much gentler about breaking panic. Much softer. Like his smile. _His_ smile, not the grotesque contortion cleaving his face as he digs his teeth into someone’s—

Eren just punches me until I stop screaming.

It works.

“You know what he’s like,” Armin soothes, holding an ice pack to my nose. “You know that he’s succumbing, but it’s been getting better, right?” I nod thickly. “I can’t tell you what to do, Jean…”

“I can’t kill him,” I protest, my voice weak and scratchy. Tears fill my eyes again already. “I can’t, Armin, it’s so fucked up.”

“I know, Jean.” He shifts the ice, apologizing softly when I wince at the pressure. “Can you still feel his soul?” I nod again. I know well the warmth and the drumming, distinct from his heart but in perfect, musical synchrony. “I figured. Marco’s always been one of those people. Just keep an eye on him, okay? Keep him happy. We’ll find a way to save him.”

“You mean kill him.”

Armin winces, pulling the ice pack off. “Would you rather leave him behind?”

“No.” I close my eyes, scrubbing away the image of his twisted form and thinking again of the sound of him whispering those words to me. Sweet love in my ear as he presses warm against me.

As I sob desperately into Armin’s lap, he runs his fingers through my hair and attempts to soothe me. It barely dents the overwhelming depression sinking into my bones.

“I can’t do this.”

For once, Eren levels with me, and he levels with me hard. “You have to,” he says shortly from somewhere behind me. “Because there’s a chance no one else will.”

“Just do what you’ve been doing,” Armin murmurs, leaning over me to catch my watery gaze. “Just be with him, help him be happy. We’ll get it figured out.”

“There has to be something. We have to stop it, Armin,” I ramble, trying to convince the both of us. “I can’t just… let the world burn.” He’s already shaking his head, but I sit up and lean into his space. “Who is the Architect? I’ll talk to them. I’ll do something.”

“I don’t know,” Armin says, pulling a stray shred of carpet out of my hair. Probably from when Eren slammed my face into the rug. “All the texts refer to the old gods, the ones that died before us.”

I pause. “Before you?”

He nods. “We weren’t always here, you know. Eren, Levi, Petra, Erwin, Hanji… everyone used to be human.” Armin pauses, looking over my shoulder at Eren, and his age flashes briefly on his face. He looks back at me and sighs, pulling another carpet fiber out of my bangs. “But something happened a long time ago. When the world was ruled by giants, and humans lived behind walls like cattle in pens. There was a time I didn’t even know what the ocean looked like.”

“What…” I swallow. “What happened?”

“That’s not for you to know right now.” Armin hands me the ice pack and leans back in his chair, gently nudging me to put the thing over my busted nose. “You’ll remember in time. Just know for now that there are some horrors so vile that they tear holes in the fabric of reality, and when the old gods fell into that chasm, someone had to step up.” 

“And that was you guys.”

Armin smiles grimly, playing with the ends of his long hair. “And a few others.”

Holding the ice pack to my nose again, I let my gaze drop to Armin’s feet, curled under him in his chair. It’s a little hard to stomach the idea that I’m talking to a damn god, and that I’ve been hanging out with one all year. Shit, it’d been hard enough to deal with the reality that Eren is Death. 

I shake it off. Bigger things at hand.

“How can we figure it out?” I look back up at him, undeterred. “Architect’s gotta be one of you guys, right? Maybe it’s that Erwin guy, he kinda looks the part.”

Eren laughs humorlessly, then moves to collapse behind me in the chair, forcing me to share space with him. “Erwin has another role.”

I roll my eyes, then stare pleadingly at Armin. Begging for a real answer for once, not just endless riddles and half-baked games. No more puzzles. I’m tired. I can feel it in every part of me. Armin sighs, investigating his bangs. “Eren and Annie are parish Deaths. There are many more. Not enough, mind, but there are more.” He looks at me again. “Everyone has a boss, including them. That’s Levi.”

“Death of Man,” Eren mumbles, leaning against my back.

“So, what, Erwin’s his boss?”

Armin nods. “Something older than humans. Stronger, more ruthless.”

“Death of Power,” Eren supplies. I can feel him playing with the hem of my shirt, so I elbow him in the face. I’m still pissed at him. Why, I can’t exactly remember, but I’m almost entirely sure that I am.

“I guess that explains the fucking mint suit,” I mumble, staring at my knees. “So who’s his boss?”

Armin chews on his thumbnail and raises his eyebrows.

Oh. Okay then.

I squint at Armin then, and lean toward him. He just blinks. “What are you, then?”

He laughs slightly. “I’m not good enough at chess to come up with this kind of game. I’m the Archivist. I’ve been keeping records and trying to get the history right since I took over for the person before me.”

“Told you,” Eren says, trying to budge more room on the chair for himself. “Glorified librarian.”

With a loud, obnoxious sigh, I scratch at my forehead and glare at Armin’s knee. I don’t know why I’m trying, anyway. What the hell could I say to this weird all-powerful engineer that would change their mind? Especially when I have no fucking idea _why_ they’re culling us to begin with. If the fable’s any indication, it’s because of a great war, but I have yet to see any angels or demons…

I squeeze my eyes shut. My head hurts. It’s bullshit, this is all bullshit, and I just wanna go _home._ I want none of this to have ever happened to any of us. I’m done with the stupid ash tree limbo, I’m done with the riddles and the games, I’m done with the panic and the crying and the anxiety and the terror.

I want to go back to the start.

God only knows what start that is. Maybe before I died. Maybe I’d stop myself from going outside that night, never end up dying, and maybe through some weird butterfly effect it’d stop Marco from falling through the treacherous lake’s thin ice and drowning alone on the far edge of the town. Maybe we could meet at the Starbucks, and he’d smile at me, and I’d meet his gaze, and then we’d get married and move to Vermont and have two kids and a dog and a fish. 

I’m not mad that I’m dead. Not anymore. Now I’m just pissed that I have to watch the world burn and know it’s coming, and be personally responsible for making sure that my perfect innocent lover doesn’t damn himself and unleash some kind of horror upon the world.

We’ll figure it out, Armin says. We’ll fix it. We’ll get there.

I stare out the window into the cold limbo night, at the ring of blooming trees that forms a border of sorts. 

I’m so tired. So fucking tired. It is September 5th, 2014, and I have one hundred and seventeen days left to figure out how to stop this and how to save my Marco and how to move on at the end of the year. I don’t even know if I _can_ save him, but for now, I know I can save some part of him. At the very least, I can try to keep Marco from being broken more than he already is.

\--

I have mentioned before that Marco has horrifying luck.

The first time we’d actually met, with both of us seeing each other, Marco had been talking to his father on the phone. Worry, hospital, take care of yourself, all that.

The weeks pass slow into late September, the air growing crisp around us as the trees turn colors and the already bleak grey atmosphere sinks bleaker and greyer. I try to stay strong for Marco, try to hold it together for him, and it seems like it’s working. His dreams are relatively unperturbed, aside from a nightmare here or there where all I have to do is move him to another place, away from the danger. He smiles at me, and he tells me he loves me, and I mean it with every fiber of my being when I return the sentiment.

But Marco’s unlucky. He always has been. He was unlucky from the day he was born with a bum heart, and he’s been unlucky ever since, even if he believes the scar dividing his chest means otherwise. 

Marco’s father is dying.

Lung cancer. He’s had it for years. It’s actually why they moved to Portland to begin with. He’s been in and out of the hospital several times a year for the last ten years. Complications, metastases, remissions, treatments and therapies of all kinds just to keep him going.

Marco’s been waiting for it. He kind of made peace with it a long time ago, especially after his mother passed in his senior year of high school. 

Watching him twiddle his phone in his hands, though, his tearstained gaze cast to the couch cushions between us as he shakes and tells me that things are looking bad, and that he’ll be visiting his dad in the hospital in Portland more often… he’s so tiny. He’s that tiny little boy again, the one I’d stared at when I’d first started searching desperately for a reason he had to die back in January. The one I’ve been watching unfold as those reasons grow blurrier and fainter.

He doesn’t ask me to come with him, and I have no idea if I even can, so I don’t offer. I hold him tightly, though, and he squeezes me tighter and longer than usual while I try to soothe him but end up just covering him in light kisses.

I can’t believe I’d ever hated any part of him. Even the first damn freckle I ever saw, right at the corner of his left eye, the one that hides when he smiles and that seems intensely out of place when he’s sad.

Marco takes his first weekend to Portland on September 27th, with ninety-five days left in the year. Ninety-five days to try and save him from the void. Ninety-five days to figure out what to do with his misplaced soul. Ninety-five days to show him how desperately I love him, and ninety-five days until I disappear again from his life like I was never here. 

With or without him.

\--

Ninety-one days remain in the year, and October 1st is a shitty rainy grey Wednesday that finds me and Eren sparring again. 

He ducks and fakes out, feinting left. My sort of blind zone. I close my good eye and jump back, back again, spinning the scythe up to catch his right hook. The thick handle shatters his wrist with a sickening _‘crthnch.’_ He drops, plants his remaining hand in the slippery grass, swings his foot up at my face. The razor-fine blade severs it at the ankle. I jump over his other knee, riding his body’s momentum to catch me unguarded.

I tuck the scythe against my back, peeking with my good eye. He spits up at me, I dodge. 

Deep breath. Close eye. Focus. Wind up the jump, give gravity a big ‘fuck you,’ jump. Higher. 

I flip over his back, given height by those convenient dead-people psychic manipulations. He grins, moves into a damaged crouch, intending to shoot away.

Scythe spins out. All about the centrifugal momentum. I crash onto his back before he can spring. He collapses under my weight, crouched on him like leapfrog. Blade’s heavy. It swings under his extended throat. I can see his grin.

Thick angle of the scythe smashes to a halt against his neck. Upon impact, fuck gravity, use _force,_ both hands tight on the handle as I _yank_ up and jump and flip backwards, farther behind him, blood flecking the air around us like rain. On my weapon, on my face, my clothes, the grass, staining the air, I taste metal—

Eren collapses. His head rolls to a stop a few feet away.

I win.

“Way better,” the head gurgles, face smushed into the wet ground. “Especially with the psychic shit. You got good air.”

Panting slightly, I toss the scythe into a better grip, catching it when it falls into my palm as its usual thorny stick. I meander over to Eren’s head and pick it up, too used to this and too pleased with myself to be grossed out about holding a decapitated head. “I kicked your ass.”

“Fuck it,” he gasps, sticking his bloody tongue out at me. A cascade of metallic ooze pours out from between his lips, probably whatever filled his mouth before I picked him up. The stink of iron radiates up from the grass where his body has already started boiling off into nothingness. It’s convenient, not having to dig him a grave every time I slaughter him.

“You done getting your ass kicked yet?”

He blows a raspberry, inexplicably, and blood splatters gross and slimy onto my face. “I’m tired out, yeah. Let’s head back.”

Stuffing his head under my arm, I slide the branch into my back pocket and run my damp sleeve over my face out of habit. It’s starting to rain harder now; I imagine if we’d tried to go one more, I’d end up with waterlogged shoes.

My bag is at the edge of the clearing, and really serves no purpose except to transport whatever pieces of Eren are left by the time I’m done with him. I shove his head into it and zip it closed, slinging it across my chest, and we head out along the barely-beaten path toward the town.

I trudge in silence for a good while, mulling a thousand things over as we go. The head gives a muffled sigh. “When are you gonna ask, dude?”

He could be referring to any number of things, but there are a few things in particular I’ve been tripping over a lot, what with all the stuff with Marco’s dad. I come to a stop on a half-rotten felled tree and stare up through the leaves, rain dripping cold on my face. Come to think of it, I’ve been thinking about a lot of the shit I ignored earlier in the year, when I was stuck in my own head and just trying to get by. Everything that’s been said, all the shit I missed or just flat out didn’t question.

I’m especially suspicious of coincidences.

There’s a pretty big one I’ve been stuck on for a few days.

In May of 1999, I left for Kansas with my mom to escape the pollen. Pollen’s not uncommon around here. Really fucks up the air quality. 

Thing is, 1999 was also the last time Eren was here, and the last time Trost had a reaper. I was nine, so I didn’t know or care why we were leaving, and as far as I knew my dad had to stay for work. I accepted my mother’s explanation without blinking.

My father died suddenly in October of that year. There was no funeral and we didn’t go back until early 2000. I never found out how it happened. When I came home, we just went about our lives with gaping holes in our hearts. I stopped bringing it up, because I hate seeing my mom cry. She did a lot of that on her own. 

There’s no fucking way Eren’s presence here and my father’s death are unrelated. I refuse to believe it. The Architect themselves could fall out of the sky and swear up and down that there’s nothing to it and I’d just flip them the bird.

I close my eyes and let the rain patter on my face soothingly, trying to put words to my question. The head in my bag shifts weirdly, then vanishes, leaving me with a much lighter and much cleaner bag. Eren’s sitting above me in a tree, swinging his feet and fiddling with some dying leaves.

“You already know what I’m gonna ask,” I mumble, stuffing my hands further in my pockets. 

“Probably, yeah.”

I run my hands through my now-soaked hair, plastering it back against my head. It’s getting really long on top. I’ve got some pretty serious roots, but I can’t bring myself to care enough to waste time bleaching them, stripes be damned. I just… don’t care anymore.

Thunder rolls softly in the distance, and the rain picks up against the forest around us. Fog might roll in tonight. 

“1999. What happened here?”

He peers down at me, eyebrows raised, as if he’s surprised that I didn’t go straight for the dad questions. I imagine they’ll come in time. 

For a while, he’s silent, and the percussion of the rain on fallen leaves grows near deafening in the pause. It’s cold, the rain. Gonna be a bitter fall. Autumn. Fuck.

“Flu outbreak,” he says finally, shattering the calm.

“Not a pollen upswing?”

“No.” I stare up at him, watching him avoid me, and I can kind of feel myself drifting. So tired. I’m so exhausted. From this, from my whole tiring life, from every tiring life I’ve ever lived… I just want to sleep. Go home and sleep. Thunder again. 

“Was it actually the flu?”

“… No.”

Of course. I close my eyes again, floating in that, breathing in the loamy air and letting the cold seep into my bones. It was that virus, the Purge virus. It was the beginning of the end. If Trost had seemed a little emptier when I came home, I hadn’t noticed. Now that I force myself, though, the image of my classroom bursts through the fog, and half the seats were empty and the teacher was thin and tired.

No one was sick, though.

“It didn’t work, I guess, the first time,” Eren says, barely audible over the haze. My head hurts. My throat, too. All of me. “A lot of people died later in the year, but they didn’t… come back. They were still light, still human souls. Not like this. It was easy to clean up. No one got away from us that I know of.” He pauses, and I feel him looking down at me, but I’m more aware of the heat rising in my throat. I’m dizzy. “Your dad was a good man. Dedicated. He loved you a lot. He’s resting now, promise.”

“Did you see me that year?”

“Yeah. Tiny, angry. Same as now.” He sighs, picking a dead leaf off a little offshoot and crumpling it wet between his fingers. “You weren’t always like this.”

I don’t reply. I don’t want or need clarification, and I think he knows it too.

My face is wet. Rain. Just… warm, salty rain, mixed in with the cold drops that drip from the treetops.

\--

October blooms wet and grey around us, bringing lingering morning fog and rain and persistent chills. There are a few sporadic deaths still, nothing too intense. If I need to break into anyone’s house, I wait until it’s dark and I hover around until I find an unlocked window. I try to leave everything the way I found it. Whether it’s respect for the dead or a desire to evade Trost’s scant police force, I have no idea. Probably both.

I do my best to keep Marco’s head above water, but I can see him becoming more subdued. He goes every weekend to visit his father, and every time his phone rings, he jumps a mile. I hate this. I hate watching him like this, constantly on edge.

He dreams a lot about the night he got a phone call from the hospital about his mother. It wakes him up at night. I pretend to still be asleep while he sobs into my chest, but I stay wrapped around him tight so that maybe he’ll feel less alone.

I would give anything to take this pain away from him. Anything.

The exceptions to that ‘anything’ are growing disturbingly faint.

\--

Marco’d had a particularly vivid dream on the 13th of October, so the next day I casually arrange myself in the Starbucks, knowing that he’ll come by to get coffee. He’ll probably just drink that, rather than eating. He loses his appetite so quickly these days.

Right around one o’clock, he comes in with Erd and Gunther. No Christa. She has a client around this time on Tuesdays, so she never makes it to lunch here. That’s probably why I came today, other than to check up on him after last night. He smiles at me when he sees me, waving brightly, and I wave back at him from his usual spot in the corner. 

“Don’t usually see you around these parts,” he murmurs, plopping into the chair next to mine and leaning in for a soft kiss. 

“I ran out of instant,” I reply, gesturing at my coffee. He sets his down next to mine and crosses his legs under himself, hauling his bag off his shoulder. “You’re not eating?”

He sucks on his lip, his eyes wandering the way they do when he cooks up a lie, and before he can feed it to me I toss one of those weird leafy Starbucks sandwiches into his lap. He bites his lip and stares at it for a second, then gives me an apologetic smile. I wave it away. I know too well how easy it is to hate all food ever. How the hell else did I get so skinny?

“Split it with me?”

I squint at him. He laughs, the sound quiet but relieving. I nod, watching him wrestle the damn thing open, and take the half offered to me. 

His coworkers join us shortly, ignoring the way I tense from my butt cheeks to my ears, and they get into whatever it is they’re doing after giving me a short nod. We’d interacted before, briefly, the few times I’d come to see Marco for his Tuesday lunch. They’re nice guys, I suppose. Gunther argues with Marco too fucking much about panic, but maybe I’m just biased. 

Rather than listen in on their conversation, I bury myself in one of Armin’s books, my hand resting idly against Marco’s knee. They’re talking data, anyway. It’s boring on my end but also the reason I’m allowed to stay and keep my boyfriend company. Were it client talk, they’d kick me out with apologetic smiles. 

I space out in the book for a while, the archaic language kind of making me sleepy. Marco finishes his coffee in the time it takes me to drink half of mine. I make him eat before he gets more, knowing as well as he does that if he doesn’t have anything in his stomach, that amount of coffee will give him a major caffeine high, followed by an early crash and general misery. He bites his lip and grins warmly at me. It makes me flush, so I just dig back into my book.

When Marco’s done, he brushes crumbs off his hands and into my lap just to be obnoxious, then bounces off to get more coffee. It’s nice, seeing this kind of mood. Especially with how hard he’d cried last night. I’d stopped fake-sleeping just so I could convince him to spill. I guess it did him some good.

I’m watching him rock from his heels to his toes as he waits in line again, tapping out some rhythm against his thigh, when Erd leans forward and catches my attention. “Marco says you play guitar.”

“U-uh. Yeah. I do.” I close my book and cross my legs, cracking my knuckles. So weird. Whatever. 

“Do you ever do open mic nights?”

I could laugh. I just shake my head, though, without really giving him any explanation. “Why?”

Erd leans back into his chair and sips his coffee. “There’s one at this bar near here. Next Friday night. It’s usually pretty dead, but Marco says you’re good, so I thought maybe you could come and liven up the place.”

Ha. Ha ha ha. I actually do laugh, and I’m glad that Erd thinks it’s from his description of the lame open mic affair. 

Marco comes back and flops into the chair next to me, smiling at me with a quirked eyebrow. “What?”

I shake my head, but Erd blurts, “I asked about the open mic thing.”

“Aw, what?” Marco sets his coffee down and bites his lip around a grin. “Sorry, Jean. I wanted to ask you myself. Erd’s been whining about this thing for the last two weeks. He’s desperate for something good.”

“It’s always the same shit!” Erd throws his straw wrapper at Gunther, who just rolls his eyes and closes his computer. “Just high school bands and weird slam poets.”

“What’d you say?” Marco peers up at me, fiddling with his fingers, and I guess my face says everything, because he nods understandingly and kisses my cheek.

Marco sips his coffee and slides back into easy conversation with his coworkers, but I’m stuck on the barest flash of disappointment that had crossed his face. I squint at him, pursing my lips until he notices and laughs at me. 

“What? Something on my face?”

I just shake my head.

When he stands to head back to work, he kisses me warmly, and his lips taste like pumpkin spice. Jeez.

Moments like this seem jarring, given what’s going on in the background, and my anxiety is starting to bubble to a point that’s insanely hard to ignore. Still, when he smiles at me and he gives me these incredible coffee kisses, it makes it so worth it. Seeing him happy soothes me. 

I can’t shake the knowledge that I have seventy-eight days to figure out what to do with him, though. I have seventy-eight days to make the most of before the darkness comes.

\--

“Hey,” I murmur into Marco’s neck later that night, sliding one hand up his shirt. He shivers and rolls his hips up against me, his hands resting firm on my thighs where they’re spread over his lap. “Wanna ask you something.”

“Mm?”

Leaning away from his warm throat, I nuzzle him softly. “Did you want me to do that open mic thing?”

He blinks up at me, moving his hands to my waist. “I mean, you know I like hearing you play.” I raise my eyebrows, waiting for him to continue. He shifts under me, fiddling with my shirt. “And I totally have faith that you could do it. But I don’t wanna make you do anything you’re uncomfortable with, you know?”

That’s extremely true. And it’s also true that I would be a nervous wreck about it.

But I’m the one that’s encouraging Marco to live his dreams, or whatever the fuck’s happening over here. Why should he at all feel inclined to follow my advice about enjoying life when I can’t even sit in a stupid bar and fucking play my guitar for a few minutes?

My contemplating face is also my pissy face, I’ve come to find out, because Marco’s staring up at me nervously and he’s definitely gone soft. “Jean?”

I sigh and burrow back into his neck, one hand coming up to play with the soft hair behind his ear. It’s oddly comforting. His hands move soothingly up and down my sides, his breathing slow and easy despite my weight on him. “You think I could do it?”

“Hell yeah,” he laughs, tickling my sides lightly. “If you set your mind to it.”

There are seventy-eight days left to relieve Marco of as many regrets as I can, but I keep forgetting that there are seventy-eight days left to abolish my regrets too. I don’t know how it keeps slipping my mind. I used to be really fucking selfish, too, when I was younger.

Ten days until this open mic thinger. Better figure out what I’m gonna play.

\--

I have played for people before. Besides Eren and Marco, I mean. 

I played for my mom when I was first learning, and again much better when I came home from college. I played for the scant friends I had in high school after a lot of goading and mild threats. That’s about it, but I’ve fucking done it, even if sweat made my fingers slide a fret too far along the strings.

That being said I’m going to fucking puke my brains out and run far and fast into the night.

It’s October 24th. I wonder if there’s some horrible war holiday or notorious bad-luck day on this date. Probably not. But seriously, why the fuck did I agree to this?

Oh. Yeah. Marco telling me he believes in me. Marco smiling so wide when I told him he could tell his stupid coworker I’d show. 

(The promise of a week straight’s worth blowjobs had nothing to do with the decision. Maybe.)

I should’ve chosen a better fucking song. Something less dumb and fucking stupid and weird and dead-boy-ish and _ugh._ I hate everything.

Not Marco. I don’t hate Marco. I couldn’t hate Marco, not when he pops up behind me and whispers that he loves me into my ear, so quiet it’s not jarring, even to my hyperaware senses. Not when he wraps his arms around my waist and squeezes, not when he sees my general stiffness and takes it upon himself to fucking _pick me up off the fucking ground_ and spin me like a fucking. I don’t know. Playful bear. 

Erd was right, though. This place is a shitshow, and ‘weird slam poets’ doesn’t even begin to cover the other participants. I guess all the Trost youth have been hiding like cockroaches somewhere nearby, because there’s a genuinely suspicious amount of eyeliner in the room.

I hate this town. Who lives here by choice?

Running my hand down my face, I lean my head back onto Marco’s shoulder and sigh loudly.

“I believe in you, Jean,” he murmurs, nuzzling into my ear. Such a goddamn teddy bear.

Christa would tell me to come up with a rational response to my fears. Marco doesn’t tell me the same thing, and I think it’s because he doesn’t even want to approach the weird line between lover and therapist. He knows how to bust my panic and he does when it comes up, and were I to panic, he’d be there. 

For now, he’s letting me deal with it.

He believes in my strength enough to let me guide myself through this extremely trying situation.

He’s amazing. Marco’s fucking amazing. 

Reaching up, I dig my hand into his soft, clean hair, relishing the happy little purr he lets out against me. I could fucking cry.

There are sixty-eight days left to feel his hair between my fingers, to feel him press sweet love into my ears, to absorb his warmth into my frigid dead body. I sigh and close my eyes and try not to fucking think about it. 

Some weird part of me wants to sprint away from this, away from his sweetness. There’s a tiny guilty part of me that thinks that if I just—if I somehow push him away from me, the brief hurt he’d feel over me would somehow fade over time and he could find someone better, someone happier, someone whose smiles aren’t tainted by fear or anger or guilt. 

I also know that’s fucking stupid.

If I ran from him now, he’d throw himself into his dissertation and his clients, and he’d be alone in his dark fucking nightmares. Then there would be no one there to shove him into closets when grinning Death drips like tar-slick black hair from the void. I may be an asshole, but as far as I know, I’m the only one keeping this darkness at bay. 

Marco’s strength only shines bright when it comes to other people. He hides his own pain under smiles, and he succumbs to his darkness so easily that it fucking stabs me like a—never mind.

I’d never leave Marco alone with those dreams, is what I’m saying.

I wish someone stronger than me could help him. 

Marco hums in my ear, breaking my introspection. “Where’d you go?”

I blink. The same question echoes in my skull, muttered through bloody teeth on the roof of the hospital on that chilly January night. Eren.

Shake it off. I turn to Marco and lean up, kissing him softly. “Spaced out.”

“Mm. What song are you playing?”

I give him a lopsided smile. “If I told you, I’d probably forget the lyrics.”

He laughs, reaching up to mess with my shaggy-ass hair. “You could always make some up.” He ignores my snort. “Your hair’s getting so long… doesn’t it get in your eyes?”

Obnoxiously so. I nod. “Too lazy to get it done.”

“I could do it.” He grins widely and looks around, then ducks back into my ear. “I dye Christa’s hair for her all the time because she always misses big parts of the back.”

Imagining that brings me to fucking _tears_ laughing. So neat and well-kept, the natural gorgeous thing that is teeny little Christa Lenz, and she wears her glasses to watch Korean horror movies and drink box wine and let Marco dye her roots. Amazing. 

“Yeah, maybe it’d be nice to get this shit off my face.”

He nods, satisfied, and leans back up. “I think I have some bleach hanging around. I’ll try to not butcher it.”

“You’re the one that has to look at it if you do.”

That Disney prince laugh. My expression softens as I stare up at him, fingers laced on the small of his back. I don’t even try to hide my fucking gooey love-eyes from him anymore, if I ever did. There’s no point. It makes him happy, anyway. I can see it in the way his cheeks turn pink and he bites his lip and smiles.

Marco deserves to be loved.

Marco deserves the fucking world. If I could hand him everything on a silver platter, I fucking would. He deserves a universe of nice things, not a bum heart, a dead-end town, and a hidden stopwatch counting the seconds until I have to take him.

My eyes burn. I bury my face in his shoulder. The whole crying thing is getting harder to hide, but I can’t fucking stop doing it.

Fuck.

\--

I’d knocked back an insufficient amount of liquid courage before my turn came up, and when I got up onto the dumb little corner stage and sat on the fucking stool and cleared my throat a million times and faked getting ready, I stared at the floor and pretended that nothing outside of the cracked wood between my toes existed.

I’d closed my eyes then, and taken a deep breath, and thought good thoughts. Marco and Eren and my mom all telling me I’m good. My mom had cried. She was so proud. So fucking proud of her withdrawn angry little fuckup son.

When I played, I didn’t cry. When I sang, I didn’t cry. When I finished the two songs I was allowed, I didn’t cry, not even at the scattered clapping filling the shitty bar.

When I stood and looked up at Marco and saw the fucking _face_ he was making, I rushed to my guitar case, put it away, and set it aside, and then I sprinted out the back door into the chilly night, my desperate gasping breath fogging the air and chills running sharp over my bare arms.

I don’t know how long I ran. I don’t even know where I ran to. The bar is a shithole-in-the-wall in some bumfuck part of town I rarely frequented at any point.

I ran until I found a fucking hill covered in dew-slick grass and I climbed straight to the top of that shit and I stared up at the dark moonless night and I fucking _screamed_ until my chest hurt and my sinuses and my throat burned and my voice cracked and fizzled out of existence.

I screamed because Marco’s face was alight with this incredible emotion I can’t even begin to put words to, and he was fucking _glowing_ in the cigarette smoke and cheap liquor smell. I screamed because even from that distance I could see the tears in his eyes. I screamed because the songs I’d sung weren’t the ones I’d planned. They weren’t the same rhythmic bullshit I always play for him.

Instead, what came out first was one of the trillions of gay-ass songs I’d written thinking about his smile. 

And what came out after that was the song I’d written when I came home on September 5th and thought too long and too hard about how Marco deserves a long, happy, beautiful life full of love and light, and the closest thing I can give him is a loving death.

I’ve never played one of my own songs for anyone. Ever. I squirreled them away because art’s fucking hard and it’s impossible to ever feel like you’re good enough, especially when you’re fucking creating something for the being that consumes you and envelopes you and becomes the perfect little light in your dark, fucked up life. 

And Marco had loved them.

I screamed more into the blurry, wavering stars barely lighting the sky in the dark absence of the moon, and then I hauled ass back into that bar, found my worried, fidgety boyfriend, and kissed him until both of us were dizzy for it.

\--

Marco thanks me a thousand times for doing the open mic thing, and he thanks me a million times more for singing him songs no one’s ever heard before. He thanks me in soft whispers, in breathless love, in warm glances. 

I fucking hate how brief happiness is.

I fucking _hate_ how short the time is that I get to see his face so flushed with life, his eyes bright and stirring with emotion, his lips smiling even pressed against mine.

There’s so much time, and so little simultaneously. Every second that he’s bright and lively is precious and priceless and when it’s gone it falls like water through my fingers. I can’t grasp these moments tightly enough to fight the rising silence. 

There’s so much bad in the world. There’s so many reasons to cry. There’s so many reasons to drink and smoke and hide and punch walls and hate everything, and not enough reasons to smile and tell someone that you’re in love with them.

 _‘There was a time once where loving someone wasn’t more frightening than dying.’_ I want that time desperately. I will face every bad thing that happens in that time, and I will do whatever it fucking takes to protect him and I will tell him every chance I get that I love him if I can have that time. 

Because my time here is short. His is too. We’re running out rapidly.

And even if we had more time, Marco’s unlucky. He’s always been unlucky.

During his Tuesday lunch on October 28th, 2014, with sixty-four days left to grace the world with his presence, Marco’s phone rings.

\--

There’s a brief, nearly-shrieked conversation with Eren in the Starbucks bathroom. I break some shit. I try to break him. He catches my lame fists and stares down at me with this unbearable open _pain,_ and I can’t fucking look at him so I grip his hands and I stare at the floor and I cry.

It turns out I’m allowed to leave the parish. It’s Eren that can’t. If I run into trouble outside of Trost, I’m fucked.

I don’t care. I don’t care.

Marco can’t drive like this.

Marco can’t drive when he’s staring wide-eyed at the floor, his phone breathing distant voices from where it’d fallen in his lap. He can’t drive with tears flooding his blank eyes and pouring down his face.

He can’t drive with the familiar voice of his father’s doctor ricocheting around his skull, shrilling the words in pained murmurs.

_‘I’m sorry, Marco. I’m so sorry. We did everything we could.’_

I whirlwind out of the bathroom, making a show of scrubbing at my bright red face and my dumb wet broken eyes, and I fall to my knees in front of him and try to find him in there.

Who knows where he’s gone.

He leans into me and his hands come up, shaky and weak, to grasp at my shirt. All I can do is hold him tightly while he quakes.

\--

I haven’t driven since I moved home a few years ago, but I guess it’s not something you ever really forget. The main concern is not getting pulled over. I have an expired license belonging to an expired human.

Marco sleeps near the entire way to Portland, unable to face it yet. I hold his hand tightly in mine, and even in his sleep he tremors. His face is so pale, despite the wet tracks of tears that should bloom bright red around his eyes.

Just white. Stark white. Ghostly.

I don’t turn on the radio, even if he’s asleep. Music is powerful and I can’t risk that shit right now. Not for him, and not for me. I just deal with the sound of the churning road and watch the asphalt fold under the headlights of Marco’s little grey car.

Portland’s ninety miles north and a little to the left of Trost. I toe the speed limit and piss off drivers and give exactly zero fucks because I’m trying to draw out the time between us and whatever ungodly creation deigned to take the last of Marco’s little joys from him sixty-four days before he died.

Sometimes it’s just bad luck.

Should I ever find out that any power but chance had anything to do with it, I will give myself over to the brutal savagery boiling hot and vile inside of me, and there is no force in any universe that will save the thing responsible for doing this.

\--

Marco’s dad’s doctor is a very nice man. He takes Marco’s hands in an honesty that only years of close understanding can bring, and he talks to him in soothing tones. He’s good at delivering the news. I’d fucking hope so, the guy’s a fucking cancer doctor.

When Marco’s shoulders hitch, he buries his face in his hands, and the doctor squeezes his shoulder and somehow, unfathomably, ends the conversation. 

I’m there in a second. It takes a bare few steps to cross the shining tile to Marco, and he falls into my shoulder and he just fucking lets go, and I’m so grateful that he does.

We sink to the floor, my back against the wall and his legs wrapped around me and his face still buried in his tear-filled palms, and he leans into me and fucking bawls like a child. No matter how tight I hold him, it doesn’t seem tight enough. It doesn’t seem to soothe his shaking, gasping, _broken_ sobs, his half-formed thoughts that trail into desolate misery.

I’m not sure how many times he shudders, “I never got to say goodbye,” but if I never have to hear that fucking filthy, awful word come from his mouth again it will be too fucking soon. Not in this life, not in any fucking other. Never again.

I want to save him so badly.

I want to save him.

\--

We’re budged before too long to some other room where we’re not crowding a main walkway in the middle of the hospital, and Marco curls up across the seats with his head in my lap and cries more into my stomach.

He’d said he was expecting it, that he’d made peace with it, but that’s fucking easy to say when you haven’t had to think about what’s going to happen to the body. Where the funeral will be. What to say over his grave. How to put twenty-five years of devoted adoration into something as fucking stupid as words.

I run my fingers through his hair and I hold him but I don’t know what to say. If I say anything I might make it worse. Even if it’s well-intended. 

Somewhere under the grief and the pain, Marco knows that his father lived a good life, all things considered. He saw his only son frequently. They talked even more often. He was successful until his health disallowed it, and his son is a brilliant young psychologist. His wife’s death and the cancer were dark spots in an otherwise well-lived life, and he’d outlived estimates several times over.

Marco knows these things. I know he does. He’s searching for the silver lining even as he hiccups and sniffs. 

Even idealists need help sometimes.

I know he knows it, but I say it anyway. He peers up at me as I do. His breath hitches and his shoulders shake, and I can see the depression setting in quiet and cold, but he listens. 

He thanks me again, his voice weak and distant. I cut him off with a kiss that nearly breaks my back to pull off, because I don’t want him to thank me for allowing him to show his pain for once, and god fucking forbid he apologize for _any_ of this. Ever.

\--

His dad was good about making his affairs manageable for Marco, knowing that there might not be anyone to help him. Fuck, I know I’m no fucking use. I didn’t even have a will when I died. I don’t have a clue what happened to my affairs. Or my fucking student loans. Marco’s father leaves him with no debt, no property concerns, near no hospital bills, and nothing but the request to donate his body to science and to be happy and live.

The funeral is on November 4th.

Marco had packed his suit in a moment of brilliance, although he’d forgotten near everything else. I rent one from some shop that looked cheap at the time. The thing is unforgivingly stiff and too big on me, and the shoes are uncomfortable. Everything’s too big for my weedy little corpse. I don’t know how to tie a tie, so I’d given it my damndest, and before we left the hotel room, Marco had pulled me to him, tugged it off, and retied it in an immaculate mirror image of his.

The sky is dark grey, a misting rain falling on us from the cracked, heavy clouds, and the empty casket bearing only a singularly lonely symbolism is lowered slowly into the muddy, worm-ridden soil while Marco and I watch and say nothing.

There are a few family friends who give Marco their well-wishes. The doctor comes to the funeral with his wife, clasping Marco’s shoulder again as he passes. There’s no framed picture, no priest, and a scant few eulogies impressing into the grave’s stale air that the man symbolized there was good and kind, and stronger than most people could ever hope for. 

The doctor leaves quietly, telling Marco to call if he needs anything, knowing as well as I do that Marco won’t. The family friends trail off into the mist after offering heartfelt condolences. The chill sets in thick and our breaths puff out slow and white as the time ticks by in trickling silence around us. His hand is cold in mine, so cold from the bleak November air, but I don’t let go. He doesn’t either. He just… watches. He stares into the darkness, its earthy smell almost calming, and I let him. 

He’s shivering by the time dusk looms, and we’re both soaked to the suited bones.

“Marco?” 

Turning to me with wide eyes, he looks at me, and once again he’s smaller than he should be for someone his size, and now his gaze is just… drifting. Lost. 

Not lost. Not fucking lost. Not that.

“What should we do, love?” I bring his knuckles to my lips, his frost-stung fingers icy against my cold skin. “You’re gonna get sick if we stay out here when the temperature drops.”

“Oh.” He sighs and looks up at the slowly drifting storm clouds drawing the darkness over us. “Yeah.”

I tug gently and pull him to me, wrapping my arm around his waist and trying to warm him with whatever heat I have left in my corpse.

He leans his face into my dripping hair and sighs again, nuzzling into me. “Is it bad that I kinda just want to get drunk?”

A snort, dry and entirely humorless. “No. That’s what most people do, I think.”

“Just tonight.”

“Yeah. Just tonight.”

\--

We buy three bottles of whatever from a confused-looking clerk, dripping on her counter and looking like bilge rats, and we head back to the dinky motel we’ve called home for the last week. I wouldn’t expect Marco to stay in his father’s house, so I’m glad he didn’t suggest it. 

I make him take a long, hot shower with me before anything else, running my frozen hands over the clammy expanse of his chill-pale back until both of us are warm and flushed and convincingly pumping blood again. He just leans his face into my neck and lets me hold him.

I can’t fucking stand this. I can’t stand how dead he looks, how sad his eyes are, how slowly he blinks when I talk to him. I can’t take the way he’s just sat himself down and become this broken little thing. 

Midway through the first bottle he opens up and tells me stories about how his dad had taught him to drive in a cracked, uneven parking lot, and how he just couldn’t get the hang of driving stick. He tells me about how much his dad had cried taking his prom pictures, his graduation pictures, his other graduation pictures. How proud he was to see his son growing up into a wonderful, vibrant human being against so many odds.

That was when Marco first started hiding his sadness.

We lay on the hotel bed and pass the bottle back and forth and we both fucking cry about it. 

It’s near the end of the first bottle, his fluffy, bed-dried hair shining in a halo from the low light on the end table, when he leans up onto his elbow and blows my fucking mind. Again.

“Hey, Jean.”

“Mm.”

A long pause, his warm fingers tracing the arch of my ribs. “What do you think it’s like?”

I blink up at him. “What?”

The tips of his fingers dust over my scar. “To die.”

And just like that, the world falls to pieces around me. I’m overwhelmed in the tumultuous guilt that floods every part of me knowing that I failed to protect him from this pain. There aren’t words to tell him that it hurts, and then it hurts _badly,_ and then you’re devoured by a creature with no eyes and an endless chasm rotting inside him.

“Dunno,” I croak finally, my voice weak and trembling and stinking of cheap rum. “Probably sucks.”

He gives a short, huffed laugh. “Yeah, I bet, huh.”

Shit. Fucking smooth. I swallow my heart, forcing it down out of my throat. “Maybe it’s not that bad.”

He hums and rolls onto his stomach next to me, propped up on his elbows so he can brush my messy bangs out of my face as he considers me.

“I think it’s probably a bad time,” he murmurs, “But I’m gonna tell you something. Oh, you might want to leave…”

“I doubt it.” 

The way he laughs breaks my fucking chest open.

“There’s this old… I dunno, maybe it’s a folk legend or something. But it says that when you die, you go through a door, right?” Not quite. I nod anyway. “And that if you come back after you’ve stepped foot on the other side, you take a piece of the afterlife with you and it becomes part of you. So you’re half alive, and half not, until you go through the door again. That piece, though, sometimes it lets you see things that other people don’t.”

I’m shaking so hard. It takes every fiber of my being to not just start bawling. He leans down and nudges his nose against me and continues only after my eyes have slid shut from his warmth and the smell of hotel soap on his beautiful skin.

“Well, you remember that heart surgery? When I was a baby?” My eyes flash open, but his are closed. Of fucking course I remember the source of the scar down his chest. “Apparently, I, uh. Didn’t make it. For a second. So when the surgeons got me back, I took a piece of the afterlife with me.”

I dig my teeth sharp into my lip and focus on just breathing.

“Oh, you’re gonna laugh…” I’m not. I’m not, I’m not, I don’t think I could ever laugh again after this, all I am is a collective of broken sobs—“When I was little, I thought they were angels. Even the mean ones, or the ones that just stared at me.”

My mouth is dry. 

I lean up, slowly, shakily, and he looks at me with these eyes that pierce everything I’ve ever been with this unbearable, horrifying sadness, and I don’t want to hear the rest. My lips tremble, my throat is stuck shut.

“Of course, I figured out that they weren’t angels after a while, and I just… started pretending I didn’t see them. They kind of scared me when I realized what they were, you know? Ghosts are scary.” He sighs and leans his chin in his palm, his fingers trailing down my shaking arm. “But now I think… maybe not all of them are. Some of them just want to go home.”

I can’t breathe. I hear ringing. The roar of my pulse.

He bites his lip and looks up at me. “You always looked like the kind of person who just wanted someone to be nice to you, Jean.” His smile is tiny, and shaky, and tears spill down his face again as he fucking crumbles me in his beautiful hands—“I’m glad you came down from my window.”

I am broken.

My teeth grit, my tense muscles tremble, tears pool in my vision and I am shattered into a thousand useless pieces as I squeeze my eyes shut and give myself over to the desperate sobbing I fail to muffle against his warm, bare shoulder.

\--

He doesn’t ask me how I died or why I’m here. He doesn’t ask me about unfinished business. He doesn’t even ask me why I’d fucking followed him around for four months and then robbed him. I imagine he has his own theories about it. That’s just how Marco is. 

If he really wanted to know, he’d ask. If he really wanted me to know what he thinks, he’d tell me.

It’s enough that he thinks I’m just a lonely ghost.

I can’t bear to lie and I could never possibly explain to him the truth.

So instead, we cling to each other, and we drink more, and we kiss each other with a sort of strangely mortal desperation. When he falls asleep, his breaths are deep and even, his body relaxed and still against me.

Marco’s dreams that night are not still.

After months of falling asleep beside him, I’m used to waking up in a twisted dreamscape, so when I open my eyes and I’m not in the hotel, I’m not surprised. It’s the hospital in Trost again, in the winding bright halls of the basement where the plague victims are kept. 

I've been afraid of this place, so afraid, ever since we watched Bert raise the morgue or whatever the fuck he was doing.

An empty hazmat suit wheels a bed past me down the corridor, its pace lumbering and heavy. The bed somehow dwarfs the man lying on it. He’s sick, though, so pale and weak that even his broad chest heaves labored breaths and the shadows under his sightless eyes seem black in the fluorescents. 

They wheel down the hallway, and just as I’m wondering where to find Marco, something brushes past me. 

I jump a mile, but he has no concern for me. Bertholdt just follows the bed at a dragging pace, floating unevenly an inch or so off the concrete floor. Shit. I’d leave him to it but for the role he plays in this damned place.

That and the stench that follows him now.

That reek of the displaced, the smell of corpses thick around him, the rot that drips black from his fingertips as he hovers after them down the hallway. 

I can find Marco in a minute. The real danger is here, floating after this dying giant.

Bert is hazy again, weaving. The trail of sludge that spots the floor black and steaming traces his wandering down the too-bright hallway. He fucking _reeks,_ it’s driving me mad. It’s a constant struggle to keep following them. I just want to run from him, run far away from this creature hiding in Marco’s ex-boyfriend. Or maybe he and the creature are the same thing. I’m not sure.

I’ve never been inside the quarantine ward. With the terrors that haunt this hellscape, I’m hesitant to follow.

I can still die here.

Plastered thick with faded old signs crumbling under vibrant orange biohazard warnings, the doors open silently, easily for the suit, revealing a badly-lit hallway out of some fucking video game nightmare. The suit pushes the bed in. Bert floats in listlessly after it. I take a few panicked breaths and feign considering my options, pretending that I even have a choice, before I scurry in after them. 

It’s so fucking dark in here.

And prison-like.

The doors close themselves behind me with a soft ‘click’ and take most of the light with them.

The quarantine ward is this ancient, grotesque creation, peeling paint chipping from the walls and ceilings and littering the floor like fallen leaves. Shit’s clearly been untouched for decades. The corridor goes straight back, claustrophobic and low-ceilinged, and each room boasts a barred metal door and a filthy, wire-reinforced glass viewing window to see clearly the soul interred within.

What kind of horrible place is this? How long has this been buried beneath the hospital? It should have been bricked off, filled with cement, exorcised and sanctified and broken into pieces until its horror is diminished by its uselessness.

Bert’s decay is burning holes in the floor here. I hurry after them, my urge to escape the rising embers overriding my terror of what could possibly be waiting for me.

The suit wheels the bed into the last room on the right, all the way at the end of the corridor, and just kind of… shoves him in there. Doesn’t even line him up with the room. The bed squeaks to a halt in the middle of the messy floor, the sole light in the room flickering and snapping, and the suit slams the cell door shut and bars it. It turns toward the doors again and lumbers its way out, paying neither me or nor Bert any mind. If it has a mind. It is an empty suit.

Bert lingers outside the room, bobbing and weaving in the air, his toes barely brushing the filthy ground. 

Well. We’re here now.

I have no fucking idea why I followed them. 

I rake my hands through my hair and look around, trying not to look into any of the dimly-lit cells around me. Only place to look is Bert or the floor, so I look at Bert.

He stares, and stares, eyes half-lidded and unfocused for some time, until he slowly, shakily reaches up and presses his mire-thick palms against the ancient glass. 

It’s obvious that he’s here for the giant. Someone important to him, maybe. I have no idea. I don’t know shit about the dude. Well, no, I know some things from Marco. Like, that he’s from Jerusalem.

… Wait.

I also know that he was in Israel for the holidays. I know that when he came back, he was different, and so was Marco, but neither of them could place it.

Out of place. 

Is it possible? Can it be that Marco’s not the only one who was put back when he should have been reaped?

I dig my fists into my eyes and groan. My head hurts. Where’s Armin? Where’s Eren? Where’s anyone who can help me put this together? Bertholdt visited an area that is now overrun with a viral plague and came home changed for the worse, for the stranger, and now Trost is succumbing to the same virus and the only thing that links the two is floating in a prison block from the dark parts of hell and dripping burning ichor.

Oh, Marco… help me make sense of this, baby, it’s your dream.

Bert sighs suddenly, the first sign of life beyond stilted movement, and leans his head forward against the glass.

“You’re right,” he murmurs, his accent more subtle than I remember. “I brought damnation back to this place.”

“W-why?” I stare at him, tense, trying not to let my guard down. There’s no way I can trust him. This man is the driving force behind the waves of death and rotting souls crushing this awful place. 

“It is my role. They gave me a name for it.”

“Who, the Architect?”

Bert nods, his nose rubbing against the glass. He takes a deep breath before speaking, and when he tells me his name, I hear it whispered from under every door in this god-forsaken pandemonium, raspy and deep and grating in my skull. It makes me twitch like a fly had pulsed right past my ear, shoulders hunched, uncomfortable and on edge.

_“Plaguebringer.”_

I whip my head around, checking to make sure we’re still alone here, still blocked from the entombed patients by rusting iron bars. Nothing. I snap back to Bertholdt, hackles raised. “What about Marco?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he sighs, tacky fingers skating along the grimy glass. “Even if he resists it, mankind is still doomed to fall.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“If he succumbs,” Bert mumbles, eyes opening fully. “He will awaken an evil far older than any of us. Ancient even to the old gods. It will rule until every one of us runs out of time.”

I close my eyes. I can’t save my species. I never would have been the great hero of mankind anyway, I’m running on borrowed time. 

Not a hero, then. But selfish.

I can be selfish.

I sigh and cross my arms, staring at the cracked linoleum. Doing my job until the end and protecting Marco from shit like this is a thing I can do for two months. I can take Marco with me and fade out of humanity after everything is over.

“You always were a good fit for him, Jean,” Bertholdt says, eyes flicking around the giant’s cell. “You’re slow on the uptake, and sometimes you hurt him a lot.”

“Hey, fuck—”

“But you always make the right calls.” I stop, mouth flapping like a fish. He continues. “You’re the only one that can save him from this hell.”

I stare at my feet. I guess that’s a blessing of sorts. 

All these people, they just accept their roles. Marco succumbs to his darkness, Bertholdt spreads the machine of the Purge, Eren devours souls… Armin’s the only one I’ve seen with an ounce of defiance. Maybe. 

If everyone plays their neat little parts, I wonder what my role is.

“Don’t worry about it now. It’s not important.”

I squeeze the bridge of my nose. “Would you kindly get the fuck out of my head, please?”

“Sorry.”

He looks so pathetic, nose squished against the glass, I can’t even be fucking mad at him. He’s just doing what he’s told. From the looks of it, whether he likes it or not. I flail a hand at him, searching for words in this incredibly awkward boss battle we’re having. “What the fuck are you even doing, man?”

Bertholdt sighs again, trailing the tip of his finger in little circles through the shit he’d smeared on the window. “He’s… he’s an important person to me.”

“Who is he?”

“His name is Reiner Braun.” Bertholdt turns to me then for the first time, and his eyes are fucking black as pitch and hollow like the damned. “You will know him soon.”

Ringing rises in my ears. Sounds from the cells around me, whining and whispering and… _knocking._

“You should go to Marco now,” he continues, turning back to Reiner’s room. “You won’t like what you find.”

My eyes widen. I would stop to ask him what the _fuck_ that is supposed to mean, but instead I turn toward the ward doors and fucking _bolt._ Lights flash around me and above me, movement in the cells, my bum eye catching glimpses of faces, _horrible_ faces, but there’s no time. There’s no _time._

I crash out of the ward and sprint up the endless concrete corridor to the hospital proper. My lungs burn and my legs ache and I have a terrible stinging pain under my pulsing scar, the likes of which I haven’t felt in almost a year, but _there’s no time._

My ears play tricks on me, chasing me with hissing and whispering and scratching, the _scratching,_ the itch clawing its way from my brain through my spine and shoving me away from that damned place. I bolt up the stairs three at a time and it _hurts,_ it hurts so badly, my head pounding, chest burning. I tackle the broad doors to the ground floor and emerge—

In complete blackness. 

Thunder. The deafening roar overcoming. Darkness so thick it presses itself to my eyeballs and covers my mouth and nose like a hand, robbing me of the gasping breaths I manage—

_“Marco!”_

Weak, my voice is weak. It cracks. I flail my hands in front of me, beside me, desperate to find something and hoping to _god_ I find nothing. I scream his name again, and again, bumbling through the blackness and finding nothing but white noise, white noise.

Then I find something. The static pitches harsh into absolute silence.

I wish the thunder would come back.

_‘d on’t l o ok at m e’_

The kind of voice that reverberates. Loud and so deep it nearly falls under my range of hearing. I _feel_ it, I feel it in my bones and my guts and my brain, my fucking _soul_ rattles with this monstrous calamity.

I freeze. I don’t know where it is, so I can’t look or not look and _oh god what if I look on accident—_

_**‘don’ t lo o k at m e’**_

I can’t find my voice to respond. I shake and squeeze my eyes shut.

Wait, one eye doesn’t need light. But I can’t risk it. This _thing,_ whatever it is, I can’t risk making it angry.

A rattling sound, deathly and unnatural. Is it… breathing? The sound filters out again, low and accompanied by a hot, humid rush of air from behind me. It is breathing, and it is _behind me._

What do I do? If I move, it might kill me. I can’t see to move usefully anyway. I don’t know that I can talk to it without pissing it off.

This is hell. This is what the Devil himself has nightmares about, I’m sure of it.

I want Marco. 

The breaths come closer, crackling out hotter against the back of my neck, right at a height that’s almost—

Familiar.

Oh no.

Oh, Marco.

I have to be brave. Bert said that I’m the only one who can save him. I’m the only one who can stop him from whatever the fuck it is he’s doomed to do if I fail. Fucking hell. I have to be brave for him.

Why does Marco deserve this horrible impression of himself?

This is my fault. I’m sorry, Marco… I’m so fucking sorry.

I take a deep, steadying breath and crack my weird eye.

Nothing moves in the dark. It’s just emptiness and his breathing, slicking the back of my neck with his heat. I’m sweating.

I open my eye slowly, look cautiously, but all around me is just that profound lack of… shit, everything.

He could kill me if I fuck up. I can’t let Marco kill me. It’d break him. It’d damn all of creation. I have to try, though. I can’t just wait this shit out.

“H-hey, Marco…” That humid exhale. Not dead yet. “Baby, it’s me. Jean.” I lick my lips and flick my eye upward, searching for motion. Nothing. We’re truly alone here. Isolated in emptiness so thick it presses like—

Like water.

I could cry. 

“Marco, what’s going on? What is this?” No response. “You’re afraid, right?” 

The _screech_ of metal around us, fucking _deafening_ and crawling sick with a nauseating _static_ like _screams,_ flashes of movement all around me, looks like something _huge moving toward me_ but it stops and he breathes, breathes. I sob slightly, unable to control it, my knees knocking and my palms sweaty and my stomach churning and twisting.

“I k-know you t-t-told me that the thing… this still bothers you. B-but fuck, Marco, you’re so b-brave, you know that?” I’m crying. I can feel it. “You know I was watching you. You’re s-so brave, so much more level-headed than me. You don’t deserve this, Marco. Th-this darkness.” I swallow, fisting my hands and unfisting them just to feel something aside from my cannon fire heartbeat. “It shouldn’t have been this way.”

He _snorts_ like a motherfucking minotaur on the back of my neck, nearly shoving me off-balance, but fuck. He’s listening. I swallow.

Maybe I shouldn’t be accepting blame for this when there are about a billion ways Marco could crush me for it. 

Too late now.

I sigh shakily, moving slowly to run a hand through my hair.

“This is my fault, Marco. I fucked up. I fucked everything up, and I _kept_ fucking up, and if I hadn’t panicked the first time we met… you’d be safe from this.” I cast my eyes downward, like it means anything. “I’d be alone, but you’d be safe. I didn’t know.” He’s holding his breath, staring into the back of my head, so I lick my lips and barely, _barely_ turn my head.

_**‘DO N ‘T LOOK A T M E’** _

Wincing harshly, curling into myself a little, I look downish again, my breaths stuttering and quick.

“O-okay, but I’d kinda like to look you in the eye when I say this, love.”

Another snort, hot like wildfire. He’s not into it. I keep my gaze cast away from him, but I don’t face forward again. He seems fine with this arrangement. 

“Marco…” I scrub at my useless good eye, my hands damp with sweat or minotaur breath. “I wanna see you. I’m trying to apologize, here. Kinda seems cheap aimed at my shoes.”

I can hear him mulling it over, shifting his feet and… fidgeting.

It’s such a fucking _Marco_ thing to do, I can almost imagine him rubbing at his… whatever his nose looks like right now and staring at the floor. I can’t help but laugh softly, running my hand down my face. “You know, no matter what body you have in these dreams, I can always tell it’s you. You’re always there somewhere… it’s like when I try to get you to smile when you’re pissed about something. The smile’s there, even if I have to dig for it. It’s never so dark that it gets lost. Even now.” I squint an eye shut, rocking back onto my heels. “If I’m allowed to be a giant fucking nerd, it’s… it’s the light in dark places when all other lights go out. _Lord of the Rings_ reference. Sorry. Kinda nervous still.”

He breathes behind me, less like a damn volcano and more like himself. Shaky and scared. I don’t have permission yet, though, so I don’t look behind me.

“So can I say sorry to your face? You deserve at least that.”

_‘s o rry f or what?’_

Scratching at the back of my head, I stare upwards again. Sorry for what, indeed. I can’t tell him the truth, not right now. It’s not safe here. For either of us. I’m sure I’ve done _something_ that begs his forgiveness, though. Probably a few things.

Yeah, a good amount of things, actually. Fuck. “For lying to you. About the little things and the kinda big things. For fucking up a lot. For not doing a good enough job keeping you safe.”

Another long pause, his breathing smooth, even, and so blissfully, perfectly human.

“You’ve never had much faith in yourself, Jean,” he says with a weak chuckle. It startles the bejeezus out of me. He’d been coming from everywhere before, but now his voice finds me from his lips. Just him, standing behind me.

I want to face him… fuck. 

Lightning flashes above us, fucking _blinding,_ and ignites a hazy moon peering weakly through clouds streaking across the dark sky. I squint my weird eye shut to protect it from the light, trying to force the brunt of the feeble shine on my strained good eye. It’s lighter now, at least.

It’s also fucking _wetter._ What the shit.

I look at my feet and notice water flooding up from the damp earth below my shoes, just fucking bubbling up out of the ground. Lightning again, glinting bright off the turbulent little waves lapping up my ankles.

“M-Marco?”

“Do you think I can make it, Jean?” God, his voice sounds so weak, so faint over the rising tide. He’s asked me the same question before. Right before a flood.

 _Fuck._ “Marco, can I look at you? Please, love, let’s get out of here. Let me help you.”

I search in front of me desperately, but all I see is trees and fucking water and _more trees—_

No, I know this place.

My blood runs cold.

We’re in the middle of Marco’s lake. The one I’d pulled him out of. I’m sinking into the turbulent black lakewater, up to my knees now, not brave enough to move my feet for fear that the soil enveloping them ceases to exist. Not brave enough to risk finding out whether Marco’s dreams allow him to swim. Not brave enough to find out what happens if I look at him without permission.

I’m running out of options, though. Fucking quickly.

_“Marco—”_

“I’m afraid, Jean.” I still, pulling my hands away from the slimy water pushing against my thighs. “Everything feels so wrong. How much longer can I really fight it?”

“You can fucking fight it, Marco,” I manage, swallowing heavily. “I’m so sorry, love, I’m so sorry, this is my fault—” Water up to my hips. So fucking cold, so thick and dark. “Please, _please,_ Marco, let me help you—”

“Jean.” I freeze, and he waits, so I peer cautiously over my shoulder.

He’s standing in the water in his fucking funeral suit, _drenched_ and shivering and so damn pale. He looks like a damn—a _drowned corpse,_ I’m _panicking,_ not now not now not _fucking now_ —I need to protect him, to save him—

A hand stained black with dead blood rises out of the fucking water next to him, what the _fuck—_

It grabs his wrist, so tight they both shake, and I can _see_ it trying to yank him into the water. I turn, reaching out to him, but he’s so far, he’s _so far._ I shout his name, and he—

He’s smiling.

He’s been smiling this whole fucking time.

Tears streaming down his face, stained muddy with whatever the fuck it is the Purge sprays like blood on everything I touch.

More hands. They grab his arms, fist in his clothes, wrap in his tie, yank his hair, and they _pull, they’re fucking pulling him under I have to save him save him **save him—**_

“Jean!” I jolt at his voice, reaching out for him with both hands. He fucking _smiles,_ oh baby, oh Marco, and what he says then is almost washed out by the crashing tide.

_“It’s okay.”_

Nononono—

The hands fist tighter like claws and shred his clothes and tear his skin and he’s _bleeding_ and then he closes his eyes and he is taken.

 _Fuck_ I yank my foot out of the ankle-deep mire I’d sunk in and try to _run_ but there is no more earth for me to stand on.

I fall under.

\--

I don’t have time to find out what drowning feels like, because I jolt upright in the hotel bed with a _splitting_ migraine and cold sweat _pouring_ down my face, my chest, my hands are shaking and I’m gasping for air, desperate to escape the darkness that had nearly filled my lungs—

_Marco._

Whipping my head around, I find him next to me, quaking and soaked with sweat, a pillow pressed over his face, his knuckles white—

I grab the thing and shove it away so he can breathe and find him gnawing on his lip, trying to choke down his wet sobs. He holds me to him while I wipe away his tears and his sweat, while I whisper shaking words to try and soothe him.

He just watches me with dark eyes, still biting his lip. Long after we’ve both stopped shaking, when we’re both breathing in some semblance of calm, Marco is still staring at me, still holding my gaze while I tell him I love him, I love him, I love him.

All of this is my fault.

We have fifty-six days left.

I have to reap him.


	10. The Fall of the House of Usher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I regret everything. I wish none of this had ever happened. I'm fucking falling apart, and no force in creation can save us from this hell.

That day, November 5th, is rainy, big fucking surprise. Neither of us want to get out of bed, so we fucking don’t, and it’s fine. We’ve managed to cocoon ourselves again in our safe little world, safe against each other. 

I don’t know how to come back from yesterday. From this whole fucking week. Shit, the year, even. I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t know how to approach the knowledge that Marco’s dating a ghost, specifically one that’s been fucking with his dreams.

The worst, though, is the way Marco stares at me. I don’t know why he’s staring so hard, but it’s… fuck, it’s unsettling. Not because he’s some kind of creep or monster in disguise, hell no. Hell no. The soft thrum of his soul under my lips confirms it. 

And it’s not even that his eyes are empty, because they’re not. 

He’s just… peering. Contemplating. Watching me and the way I move when I do, the way I look at him when we sit in silence, the way I drop my gaze to his hands or his shoulder when I’m about to say something. 

A year ago I’d be curled up under the damn sink gasping into my shirt. 

I guess I just have bigger shit to worry about now. Or something. I don’t fucking know how it works.

I’m not saying that he’s not making me anxious, because he fucking is. I’m just saying that it’s not, like, panic-inducing anxiety. 

Maybe this is what ‘getting better’ feels like. It’d be nice if the rest of the goddamn universe would follow suit.

We come home to a bleak wasteland of a place in Trost. It’s like a ghost town, it really is. So many people have died. The graveyard streams with funeral suits and pale fog falling dream-like into open, waiting graves. The crowds thin and slow as the air grows colder. It’s hard to focus. Hard to do anything, really.

Marco does his work somehow, his grace and his strength unmatched. I don’t know how he does it. How can he move on from this? How can he push himself to love some creepy lonely ghost boy while he himself is so incredible, so strong, but so _fucking_ haunted?

Why can’t Marco take five fucking seconds to think of himself? Why can’t he stop spreading himself thin trying to do good for others?

It is barely November 10th when he’s curled up against me, sleeping soundly. I’d dipped in to check; more sheep dreams. He dreams so fucking vividly.

Especially those nightmares. His suffering burns bright like a conflagration threatening the smooth boundaries of his goodness, and every fucking time I feel like I’m watching parts of him wither and blacken as the edges curl up like the pages of a condemned fiction.

If I’d done my fucking job at the beginning of the year, he wouldn’t have to experience this. He could be happy somewhere, truly happy.

I’m so fucking selfish. I’m so controlling.

I _hate_ myself.

Worse than I ever have.

Looking down at his peacefully sleeping face, watching him breathe, knowing that his heart is an aching chasm, I fucking hate myself, and if I could die again…

My hand’s been resting on his chest, feeling the cadence of his steady heartbeat under the soft, rhythmic swell of his sweet soul. So beautiful. So resistant to the darkness. Where does this immutable fountain of strength come from? What happy place gives him the will to survive this?

The movement is slow. My fingers slide up his chest, tips brushing the point of his collarbone.

If I’d done my job, he wouldn’t have had to bury his father. He wouldn’t be lost in the bowels of a cursed dream world where he’s damned to wander the hospital like a phantom. He wouldn’t cry into my shoulder when he startles awake, he wouldn’t have to cling so tightly to his stupid dead boyfriend. He wouldn’t be so scared if I could have just been brave.

My thumb rides the firm column of his throat, the ridges of his windpipe subtle under my soft touch. My fingers curl around his neck, his pulse strong here. In his sleep, he tilts his head back with a rumbling hum, trusting me with his life in complete, undisturbed comfort.

If I do my job, he won’t have to have those dreams anymore.

I’m pressing.

I’m panicking. 

I’m leaving.

Before I can even start to follow this train of thought anywhere near my precious beautiful lover, I roll out of bed and land heavy on the floor, and then I’m scrabbling, slipping on the floor, is it wet? Am I wet? What if like Lady Macbeth I never scrape this blood from my hands? I somehow bring myself to standing and rush out of the apartment, scratching, _scratching,_ and slam myself into mine and through the room, into the bathroom, and then I’m puking.

My breath is fast, too fast, rattling and painful in my raw throat, my face is wet, is his blood there too? Am I going crazy? Am I dying?

I am!

I’m dying!

I’m going fucking mad and I am _dying!_

I stand and I reel and the world goes pitch around me, spinning with that shade of black that’s too dark to be real, the burning afterimage of staring lifeless into the sun, and I don’t notice the feeling of glass shredding my fist or the twinkling sound of the broken mirror falling into the sink, I don’t notice the smears of blood scratched across my face and my palms because it’s already caked fucking thick there and _I’m panicking and it hurts and I’m **dying**_

_p-please_

_please help me?_

I need help, I need help, but my throat is clogged shut with my sobs and when I try to scream I _can’t,_ all that comes out is a scratchy, silent wheeze. I’m alone, I’m all alone and no one can help me through this. I’m alone. I’m dying alone.

_Again._

My forehead hits the floor and I feel my feet scrabbling against the tile, my hands held tight to my gut as I try to claw the blood from my palms gasping and gasping and getting no air because my throat is closing and I’m bleeding and bloody and it’s caked so thick so thick so thick what if I can’t get it off what if I can’t do it can’t can’t can’t can’t can’t _dying dying dying dying dying I’m losing it losing it I know I am I’ve fucking **lost it I’m mad mad mad—**_

I hadn’t noticed the hands fisting in my shirt and jerking me off the floor. I hadn’t noticed the arms crushed around my waist, holding one of my hands tight behind my back. I hadn’t noticed the graceless tackling motion that knocks my spare breath from my lungs when I’m crushed against the shower wall.

I definitely notice the sudden downpour like ice over my blood-streaked, panic-hot skin, though.

My eyes flash open, mouth gaping like a fish to pull desperate breaths, _air in my lungs._ Oh god, oh sweet, cool air, like I’ve never fucking breathed before in my short life.

There’s someone still holding me tight, fighting my struggling, so I fist my hand in their hair and whine mutely, feet kicking and sliding along the wet tile.

Eren.

He doesn’t let me go until my sharp spasms have stopped, until my breath is something approaching even.

We sit there for a while, him crouched like frozen iron against me, keeping me from hurting myself any more. Blood swirls dark and rusty around the drain.

“E-Eren—”

“If the next words out of your mouth are an apology,” he growls into my ear, his own grip starting to shake. “I’m gonna knock you the fuck out.”

“… N-no.”

“What.”

I sigh and tremble, now from the cold more than anything else. He reaches up with his free hand and turns the shower off, then leans back to take in my generally shitty appearance. I must look like hell. I always do after a panic attack.

That was the worst one I’ve ever had, and I’ve had _bad_ ones before.

Everything hurts now, scratches along my hands and my arms and my face stinging harshly. _Jesus._ I did a number.

“Th-thank you,” I manage after a while. My knees cling tremulously to his sides, keeping him close by.

He just nods, then leans forward to press his soaked forehead against mine with a rattling exhale.

\--

We face each other on the couch in dry, warm clothes, crossed legs tangled together while he trims my nails short. I kind of want to laugh at that, but I know he’ll break my face if I do. 

“I don’t know what to do, Eren,” I murmur, leaning my head against the couch. I’m so fucking tired. “Why can’t you tell me what to do?”

“You’re capable of making the right choices,” he mumbles, peering closely at the jagged edge of my thumbnail. “You always do.”

“Yeah, but what if I don’t this time?”

“Jean.” I blink up at him, eyebrow raised. “You will.” His eyes are intense, curling dark with hurt and worry and _exhaustion._ I’m not the only one who’s tired of all this. “You need to stay strong. We’re almost there.”

“What about the Purge?”

He shrugs, moving back to my nails. “We’ll deal with that as it comes. You’re only on the clock until the year rolls over, and then you’ll go home.”

I squint at him. “Are you going to eat me?”

“God, no,” he mumbles, moving to my other hand. He’d already bandaged my hands and my forearms, so this is the last step in his apparent post-panic care clinic. “If I ate you, you’d get lost in there for decades at least. It’s a madhouse.”

Blinking, I tilt my head at him. “So, what, I just get beamed up by the mothership?”

“Pretty much, yeah. You’re an important person back home, you know. _Don’t_ think about that,” he adds quickly, pointing up at me just as my mouth opens. I think about the migraine from forcibly remembering Philadelphia, then close my mouth again and swallow thickly. Yeah, better not go there. “We can’t afford to lose you for that long in the void, so you have to be taken care of separately.”

“Seems like a messy system.”

“It’s the best we’ve got.” 

I purse my lips and think. “How come Marco’s not an important person back there?”

“I’m not gonna answer that.”

“O-oh.” I peer at him, and he raises a pointed eyebrow, warning me again to stop considering things I really don’t want the answer to. He’s right. I don’t know how many more unwanted memories I can take right now. Eventually, I assume everything will come back. Whenever my brain feels it can handle what’s on the other side of that wall built in my memory, huge and thick against a rising tide of the impossible.

Marco… he’s not critical to this stupid bureaucracy, I guess, and someday I’ll know why. Someday soon. I’m not a patient man, but I am a fucking coward. Plus, I hate headaches, and I _especially_ hate riddles. I’ve got enough on my plate, between Marco’s fate, my own fate, the fate of humanity, Bertholdt, Reiner Braun, the Architect…

Dammit. I’m already incubating a solid ache between the ears. I groan and rub at my eyes, banishing those thoughts for now. I’m too tired for that shit. Eren peers closely at my trimmed nails before he drops my hand and pats my knee, tossing the nail clippers carelessly over his shoulder. “Do you think you can go over there again tonight?”

I wrinkle my nose, staring at my bandaged arms, thinking about my scratched face. “Think he’d buy it if I told him I cut myself shaving?”

“Maybe if you were shaving with a chainsaw.”

“Hngh.”

Eren sighs, raking his hand through his hair. “Look, Jean…”

“Yeah?”

He considers me for a moment. “Promise me something.”

I raise an eyebrow at him, pursing my lips. “Depends.”

“Don’t…” He sighs again and flumps back against the couch, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Don’t kill him.”

My stomach clenches. Like a damn bucket of ice water.

“Neither of us could handle it. I don’t wanna see that, you’ll live with it for eternity, it’ll scar Marco’s soul… just don’t—don’t do that, okay?”

“What if… what if, at the end of the year—”

“If he’s not gone by the end of the year, it’ll be a miracle.”

My eyes widen, my guts tightening further. “The _fuck_ does that mean?” Panic starts to trill up my tired bones again, like pins and needles in my fingertips.

“Bad things are coming, Jean,” Eren sighs, his voice cracking like the weight of the entire downfall is crouched on his broken chest. “Just… don’t do it yourself. Keep him afloat. Don’t let him fall.”

I stare down at him, and minutes trickle by while panic and despair and exhaustion war for control of the tears streaming down my face. I know Eren feels them, dripping hot onto his bare calf spread across my lap, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t rib me, doesn’t explain any further, doesn’t even look up at me.

He just lets me cry.

So I do.

\--

Marco’s so concerned when I show up at his apartment again that morning, sheepishly picking at my bandages. He whisks me onto his couch and starts looking me over, peering at the mish-mash of bandages winding up my forearms from my shaking hands. His fingers trails over them, lingering on the ones starting to darken with bloody spots where the scabs keep breaking open.

“J-Jean—”

“Marco, _please_ —please don’t blame yourself for this, okay?”

He peers up at me, up at my genuinely desperate expression. It’s bad enough I did this, and that I now have to live with these marks, but owning up to them isn’t something I’ve ever been good at. 

His trembling hand comes up to my cheek, his eyes searching between mine. 

“It’s not your fault, baby. It’s not. I just—” I swallow, running a hand through my hair before I pull him up to sit on the couch with me and crawl into his lap like some kind of wounded animal. “Listen, my, uh. This whole thing—” His eyes narrow with hurt, with grief. I don’t need to specify. “It brought up some stuff I wasn’t okay with. I thought I was, ‘cause it happened forever ago, but I wasn’t. So I kinda… lost it. But please, please don’t blame yourself for not being there and not stopping it because it’s not your fault.” I run my hands across his cheeks, leaning in to kiss him gently. 

“Did…” He swallows, his arms coming tighter around my waist. I’m watching him ride the line between lover and therapist again, the burden easing when he falls again to the side of the worried boyfriend. “Did you hide it from me?”

“ _Not_ because I don’t trust you.” I lean until I catch his dark gaze, forcing him to look into my eyes. “I trust you. I was just… I ran away, okay?”

Marco looks me over, his hands spreading warm up my back and across my shoulders, his palms so warm and soothing. Even if they tremble a little. “How do you feel now?”

I lean my forehead against his. I hope to god that he understands that this whole thing is a genuine expression of how bone-deep my trust for him goes, because I’m breaking all my own fucking rules here. “Ashamed. ‘Course.” My arms loop over his shoulders, our chests pressing tight together. “Kinda scared.” The slight, wheezy laugh I let out has him raising his eyebrows, blinking at me. “Can’t really talk to my therapist, though. The whole ‘dead’ thing.”

“I imagine that might complicate things.” 

He’s biting his lip against a tiny smile, I can see it. I’m so fucking glad. I want to be able to joke with him again, to see him smile. I want to watch him get better for as long as we have together. 

(Fifty-one days.)

\--

Curled around each other on his bed, I tell him about my own father, just because I can’t tell him what actually made me panic. I’m not entirely sure he buys my cover, but it seems to soothe him, and he runs his hands over me and lets me get words out.

To be honest, I really thought I was okay with my father’s death. Apparently not.

I feel better, though, I really do. I’ve finally spoken about my dad out loud for about the first time since he died, not counting Eren telling me what actually happened. It’s a weight off my chest I’d just gotten used to and dealt with for fifteen years.

Marco understands that I trust him. He believes me easily when I say that it’s okay that he wasn’t there to watch me panic, to help me through it. There is no distance between us from this incident. As hopeless and self-deprecating as I am, I don’t think anything negative about it, and I genuinely don’t think he hates me.

That’s some fucking personal growth right there.

A year ago, I’d have really, honestly believed that this would make him hate me, and I’d have hidden from him. Flinched away from him. Pushed him away and cried all the damn time and probably just sunken deeper. 

But this time, with as strong as I’ve become and even with the dim echoes of a severe attack still trumpeting through my bones, logic wins out. Marco studies panic. He knows how the panicked brain works, and he knows how people who have panic attacks tend to work.

The thing about anxiety is you always think you’re alone. You think you’re the only person who hears the thunder, the only person who can’t look people in the eyes, the only one who’d rather go hungry than buy groceries because you’re afraid of making small talk with the cashier.

You’re not.

And I’m slowly learning this, with fifty-one days left to my broken little existence.

If I have one lingering regret, it’s still that I had to die to figure this out.

\--

Marco and I give each other strength. I play for him once my hands are functional and he whispers to me how proud he is. It’s like the night after Dazz all over again. We lie together and tell each other stories, and we open up to each other. I finally tell him _why_ I was in therapy, and I tell him that being dead kind of jumped me through a good few stages toward being okay. 

He must notice me being cautious about the name of my therapist. Even so, he doesn’t ask. He just waits. Observes. He’s so goddamn perceptive. Of course he’d put together what my issue was, and of course he’d watched me grow through it, and that makes his pride in me all the fucking sweeter.

We talk about his dreams in hitched murmurs. He tells me how worried he is, but he also tells me that he’s not worried by how frequently these dreams come now.

When Marco was in his undergrad, he was eventually placed in a single dorm room at the far end of his hall.

None of his roommates could stand how often he’d wake up screaming.

Instead, what worries him is how _dark_ they are now, how the lack of color haunting his disturbed slumber is more complete than it’s ever been, and it’s because of _something_ that happened. He doesn’t tell me what it is, not that I need to know. He tells me, though, that it was the most alone he’s ever been, until he woke up at the hospital, and that kind of tips me off that he may not remember the whole thing as it happened.

When I ask him if there’s ever anyone else in his dreams, he shakes his head, telling me honestly that they’re always confined to the hospital. It’s only ever me, aside from the once or twice Bertholdt showed up.

Good. He doesn’t know what’s going on outside those claustrophobic hallways. I’m glad, then, that his darkness winds him up like a hungry spider and isolates him, because if Marco knew the suffering happening all across his chaos-ridden nightmare world, it’d fucking kill him.

Marco lives for other people, so strongly it hurts. It must be where he gets his strength from. But why should he have to suffer this darkness alone in the daytime too? Why this?

“I’ll tell you one day, Jean,” Marco murmurs, his fingers trailing warm down my cheek. “I will, I swear. I just need some time.”

I just nod, then close my eyes and kiss him. I don’t want him to tell me what I already know. I remember what happened like a movie, crystal-clear and so damn cold. If Marco has to remember too… I’m scared.

What if he remembers who else was there?

\--

The month passes slowly, but not slow enough. I can see Marco unfolding again, unwrapping around the hurt of losing his only family. I can see him growing strong again, firmness coming into his hands and logic into his mind, his empathy and his kindness lighting up like a fire in his chest. His soul thrums happily, and it matches the smile on his face and the warmth in his eyes. 

I try not to count the days, but I fail. Eren and I keep finding souls wandering through the town, slopping wet out of the quarantine and sliding around in search of their homes. We reap them and send them there.

If this is the downfall of mankind, it’s kinda really fucking boring, I think one day, and the next day I grasp desperately behind me to try and find that thought so I can fucking eat my stupid, filthy words.

On November 28th, with thirty-three days left, Marco knocks on my door somewhere around mid-afternoon wearing a coat and jingling his keys nervously.

“Can I show you something?”

Oh god.

\--

It’s exactly what I was afraid of.

Marco’s car rolls into an overgrown parking lot at the start of an unused hiking trail on the edge of town, and I’m trembling. My leg’s jittering agitatedly. I can’t stop patting out a vague rhythm with my thumb against my thigh.

“My parents and I,” he starts, turning off the car and sitting back. “We used to come out here every New Year’s.”

No. No, please, please, Marco…

He gives me a soft, sad smile, and he gets out of the car and expects me to follow despite these ice-cold fingers of terror gripping me tight to my seat. I get out, though, and I stuff my hands into my pockets as I follow him.

Walking in silence, I try to fight the fuzz in my head. I can’t be here with him, not here. He’ll remember. He’ll remember who pulled him from the ice, he’ll remember who pushed his beautiful soul back into his strong chest, he’ll figure out that I’m not just a ghost. The lesson I learned from Mikasa hasn’t been forgotten. 

Being in this place again… it’s science. Cued memory retrieval. Marco will remember everything, and he’ll relive the flood, the silence, the isolation, and he’ll remember the first time we ever saw each other.

Personal growth be damned, there’s no way he can love me after that.

Trudging quietly through the forest, we come eventually to his lake.

It’s not frozen over, not yet. Murky lakewater laps at the rocky shores and leaves a thin layer of sludge and frost. The grass crunches under our feet.

“This New Year,” Marco says softly once we come to the shore, to the exact place he’d lain when I pulled him from icy condemnation. “My dad was in the hospital, so he couldn’t keep up our tradition. But I came anyway, because it’s important, you know? Especially with his health failing.” I stay a cautious step behind him, shaking like a goddamn leaf under my heavy coat. “Look, Jean, can you see it? It’s kinda foggy…”

He looks back at me, a little smile on his face as he points over the lake, and I look.

Mist rolls over the idle surface of the lake and obscures entirely the other shore, but when I squint, I can make out a little island at the center, bare but for some stick-like shrubs and the eerie black silhouette of a tree, naked of its leaves and reaching desperately for the dimming evening sky.

“It’s a pear tree.”

I blink back at Marco, who’d stuffed his hands back into his pockets and turned to face me. 

“Every New Year’s Day,” he sighs, digging the toe of his shoe into the cool mud. “We’d make the trip down here to walk across the frozen lake to the tree and sort of… say prayers to it, I guess. In Christian theology, pear trees symbolize the salvation of man, you know? And in Chinese mythology, they symbolize longevity. So with my Christian dad and my Chinese mom, we’d pray for a little of both. I don’t even know how they found this place, those two.” He chuckles. I’m trying not to sob into my sleeve. Or puke.

I could definitely puke.

Longevity. Salvation. Fuck me.

And worse, I never even knew Marco’s mom was Chinese. There’s still so much to learn from him. There’s still so many things I don’t know, so many things I could learn, so many parts of him I could love desperately if we just had the _time._

The taste in my mouth is bitter, like metal. I wonder if I bit my tongue. Marco runs his hand through his hair.

“So this year, with dad’s health failing, I came by myself. Bad idea, I know. I guess it wasn’t cold enough for the ice to be frozen thick enough.” He turns, and I swear to god, he walks down to the place I’d dumped his drenched corpse and lays right fucking there. “I was on the phone with Christa, and I fell through the ice.” He _chuckles,_ the sound pained and humorless, I can’t, I _can’t_ —“I woke up here, somehow, just for a second before I passed out again. I was _sure_ I’d drowned.” I can tell from his shaking voice that he’s not exaggerating. He knew he’d died. 

I find myself drawn to him, standing above his head and staring helplessly down at him as he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. It’s a mirror of the first glimpse of his face I’d had, upside-down and foreign, fading light barely illuminating his blissfully relaxed face.

“It happened so fast. One minute Christa was telling me something…” His brow furrows slightly. “I wonder what…”

I feel dead inside. I know my eyes are hollow. I’m just trying to stay standing. I feel myself wavering, leaning like a drunk, blinking too slow, too long. Eren’s behind me, I can feel him. He’s staring too, but his eyes are wide, horrified. Not that Marco can see him, anyway. 

Marco’s going to remember.

He’s delving too deep into that memory, the one he’s been avoiding even as it curls dark and complete around him and wrests his peace of mind from his desperately fumbling grasp.

I can feel it building.

His brow furrows darker, his eyes moving restlessly under the lids as he thinks. “Something important… about her patient. She was crying. It’s important, I just can’t—”

There it is.

My eyes close, I weave and catch myself, weave and catch. Numb.

His breath hitches.

Silence between us, stretching terrifying as his brain puts it together.

“J-Jean,” he chokes out, his voice tight and near-silent. “W-what did you say your last name was?”

I don’t answer. He knows my last name. I know he knows. I hear wet rocks shift and open my eyes, watching him fist his chilled hands in frost-sharp pebbles. “Y-you’re—you’re Christa’s—”

Our eyes lock then, my dead gaze on his wide eyes, and his breath rattles out ragged. 

He’s just as beautiful as the first time I ever saw him.

I remember so clearly. The water was freezing around us, and I was so _terrified._ He was looking at me, just like now, except our expressions are reversed. 

_‘It’s time,’_ I’d told him, and he’d just accepted it with a little sound around his final breath. His eyes are flecked with gold. They’re incredible. I don’t look away from him this time, and one of his eyes twitches as he remembers everything.

The phone call, Christa’s sobs telling her best friend that her patient was murdered outside of a bar, his empathy even as he trudges alone to his pear tree to beg for salvation, and then the ice betrays him and seals him in a frozen coffin.

Now he has a name to match to the forgotten case file. Scared little programmer, eye contact phobias and panic attacks curled up in a chair across from Christa, her soothing words calm and comforting. JK, 1046, found dead on a barren sidewalk and not twelve hours later pulling Marco from a silent early grave only to damn him to a cacophonous, swirling doom.

“H-how—you’re—you were already—”

I don’t answer him. I just stare.

He presses his palms to the sides of his head and squeezes his eyes shut with a whimper. Sorry, Marco. I know that migraine. Hopefully it’ll pass.

But then he opens his tear-filled eyes and looks at me, and then, oh my god, his gaze moves slow and jerky to the person beside me.

Eren.

Marco’s eyes widen impossibly.

Oh my god.

“Wh-what—”

Eren whimpers and ducks behind me, pressing gasping sobs between my shoulder blades. I’m breathing fast, fighting the silence, swallowing nervously as I shake on the beach of this damned lake, and Marco’s breathing harder.

_“Jean, what is that?!”_

“He doesn’t see me as you do,” Eren whispers, his voice broken and his grip on my jacket shaking. “He s-sees the o-o-other me—”

_Oh fuck._

I spread my fingers between us, backing slowly away from Marco as he scrabbles to his feet and looks for an escape route. “M-Marco—”

“J-Jean, what the hell? What is _that?_ Who are you?”

Raking my fingers through my hair, I take a deep breath and try not to lose my shit. One of us has to fucking keep it together, _someone_ has to be okay—

“Marco…” I back up further so Marco doesn’t backpedal into the fucking lake.

“You were there! Y-you—that—both of you—”

“Y-… yeah.”

“J-Jean—”

“Marco, listen.” My feet slide in the frozen grass, Eren clinging shaky to my coat and hiding himself behind me. Can’t say I blame him. He loves Marco too, for some reason, and for _that face_ to be the only one he sees… “This is—it’s really, _really_ fucking complicated, and I swear to god I’ll tell you everything if you’ll hear me out, but I died, and I came back to help this guy. His name’s Eren.” I blink at Marco, swallowing nervously. “H-he’s Death.”

Marco’s eyes bug out. “Th-that’s—that’s the grim reaper?”

“Partially, y-yeah.”

“So you—you’re his—you’re _helping_ him?!”

“Yeah. For some reason he can’t… he can’t do his job alone. He needs a ghost, an ankou.”

“So you two—I—”

“Yeah. I was supposed to r—um. T-take you. Your, uh, soul.”

Marco runs his hands down his face, visibly agitated, but at least he’s stopped backing toward the lake. “But you… you saved me instead? Why?”

“I got scared.” I twist my fingers hard between us, trying to stay here, stay focused, keeping my hands where he can see them. Stay here, don’t go into the dark. Keep it together. Marco deserves this, he deserves to know. “You were _looking_ at me, and I had _just_ died. I got scared and just… p-put you back.”

He stares at me. I cannot fucking blame him. What the fuck do you do with this information? How should he feel, finding out that not only is he dating a _ghost,_ he’s dating the _grim reaper’s secretary ghost?_ Who saved his life instead of taking it, not by any honor or virtue between us but purely by my being a goddamn coward?

“L-look, I’ll, uh.” I swallow and crack every joint in my hands. Anxious, anxious. My pulse is roaring in my ears. “Let’s go home, and I’ll g-give you some time—”

His eyes widen again, flicking to the hiking trail, then back to me. “J-Jean, why—why did you follow me? Why did you save me?”

“O-oh, Jesus, it’s nothing like that—” I rake my hands through my hair, squeezing my eyes shut for a moment. This must look fucking awful. “I know I was fuckin’ creeping on you, but it wasn’t anything like _that._ I didn’t know you before—that. Before that. I really didn’t. I swear.”

He tenses, trying to take a deep breath and failing. “Jean, you have lied to me a _lot_ this whole time—”

“I know, I knowIknow—just—” I’m gnawing on my lip, dry cracks in the chapped flesh breaking open with little twinges of pain, enough to center me again. “I’m a piece of shit, I’m a loser and a pathetic little freak, I know, but I swear to god that I didn’t _want_ to fall in love with you.”

Oh god.

Wow, _wow,_ what the actual fucking fuck Jesus Christ almighty.

Marco’s face reflects the fucked-up-ness of what I just fucking said. I scrub my hands over my face, pulling at my hair, staring into the darkening sky. 

“M-Marco—”

He’s just staring at the rocks under his feet, like he can’t decide whether he wants to cry or punch me. I couldn’t blame him for either, I really couldn’t, I just _keep fucking up._

“S-so,” he starts, his voice shaking with fear, with anger. “So you came for my soul, but put it back, and then followed me around for _months_ until you somehow solidified and wormed your way into my life because you _accidentally_ fell in love with me.”

“N-no—” I pause. No, actually, that’s fucking exactly what happened. I’m such a piece of shit. I could fucking cry, Eren’s fucking crying, Marco’s fucking crying, I just want everything to _stop, stop._ It hurts _so much._ My teeth savage my bleeding lips and hot tears run unbidden and uncontrollable down my cheeks.

“What, then, Jean? Did you decide you liked me and deigned to let me stick around?”

Marco, baby, please don’t be angry with me—

“I’m not a _doll,_ Jean.”

“I-I-I k-know,” I sob, god _damn_ my weak voice. I can’t even look at him, can’t take that face in. “I d-d-didn’t mean f-for this.” Scrubbing my hands down my face again, I take a deep, shaking breath. “I s-swear to god, I didn’t m-mean for this. I was just a-afraid. Y-you’re so g-g-good, M-Marco, so brave, and I c-can’t—I couldn’t—”

“When were you gonna do it, Jean? Were you gonna h-haunt me forever?”

I reel from that. Like a punch to the gut. My eyes slide shut, forcing a fresh wave of tears down my face, pain seeping from my gaping heart into every crevice of my being. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts _so fucking badly._

Marco’s not like this. He’s not this kind of person. He’s scared, angry, fighting his darkness. I just confirmed his suspicions that he’d really fucking died. He’s stressed, and he’s lashing out, fuck. 

Eren can’t help me through this, Marco can’t hold my hand through this.

I’m all alone.

Taking a deep breath, I look up at him, soaking in his clenched, shaking fists, his bitten lips, but unable to face the pain that must be radiating from his perfect eyes.

I owe Marco this much. Even if it’s the last thing he ever lets me say to him.

“I d-didn’t play with you, Marco. At first, it was just ‘cause I was scared. I mean, fuck, _I died._ But then I started watching you, seeing what kind of person you were, and I couldn’t do it. Not when you didn’t d-deserve it.” My voice hitches on that, but I scrub at my face and sniffle and fucking keep talking. “You’re so good. You’re loved, and you’re important. You _matter._ Fuck, I was _jealous._ I _wanted_ to take you. I was angry and fucking spiteful, yeah.” He crosses his tense arms, checking to make sure his exit is still open. “But I kept watching you. And I stopped wanting to take you. Instead, I just… I wanted to be _noticed_ again. I wanted you to see me, ‘cause I k-knew you’d _s-s-see_ me, y’know?” 

Eren’s fingers tighten in my jacket, warning me, but I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. I’ve been sitting on this for _so damn long,_ I have to fucking get it out of me.

“S-so I came back to my body. Some bullshit Death rules or whatever. I came back, and you _saw me._ And it was _terrifying._ ” 

Marco’s fists unclench, but he doesn’t uncross his arms. I can see him battling his empathy as I continue, struggling to think of himself for fucking once. “Even though I was scared, I still wanted you to see me. It stopped being scary.” I swallow then, finally looking up into his eyes and silently begging that he keep seeing me now. “I kinda just… fell for you. Ass-first. I don’t know what happened, or when, but it fucking happened, and then I wanted nothing more than to keep you safe. I still do.”

He’s still squinting, but he uncrosses his arms and looks at the grass between us, mulling over the fucking headache he must be building right now.

“I t-tried not to fall in love with you, Marco,” I breathe, my voice a tiny, broken sob, bringing his gaze back to me just as tears stream down my face again. “But I couldn’t fucking help it. You’re the most incredible human being I’ve ever met. How the hell could I _not_ fall for you?”

The ways he swallows betrays his lingering nervousness, as does the way he drags his hands through his hair again. He turns and stares out at the shivering pear tree on the island in the middle of his lake, hands in his hair, and he just… thinks.

I feel awful, I fucking do. Everything hurts. It has to be worse for him, with me laying all this grim reaper bullshit on him after months of haunting him and lying to him even as he opened himself up honest and beautiful to me.

“Do you kill the people you take?” His voice rings out clear, hard and impersonal, pulling himself away from me.

“No. I only take them when it’s their time.”

“Did you take my dad?”

My heart flips in my chest. “No. Earth is too crowded for it to just be us two. We’re only responsible for Trost. Portland’s, uh. Out of my jurisdiction.”

Marco is silent again then, considering and picking things apart and putting them together in a way that makes sense to him. I don’t honestly expect to come out of this still his boyfriend, still with his love warm against my chest. I don’t expect him to ever speak to me again. Why the fuck would he?

I can feel my will to live in any stilted sense draining into the dying grass under my feet. Sinking.

His hands fall back to his sides as he faces me again, his expression exhausted. “I need time to think about this, Jean. Alone.”

“I-I know.”

“If it’s possible, I’d like to not see you until I have this sorted out.”

“O-okay.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets, kicking at the rocks. “Can you get home alone?”

Good time to stop lying. “I’m gonna, uh. Follow your car. Make sure nothing happens to you.”

“That’s fine. Just don’t do it where I can see you.”

I nod, and he nods, and the silence between us is fucking _painfully_ empty. He moves, though, to walk past me, and I turn toward him as he does so he can see my hands and so he can’t see Eren. When Marco comes level with me, he pauses to look me over, this fucking _gut-wrenching_ sadness in his eyes, and then he leaves.

In the time I use to give him a head-start to his car, I fucking break down.

Eren catches my weak punches in his sweaty fists, watches me sob like the broken little thing I am, and when I’ve run out of energy to take out on him, I fist my hands in his shirt and I fucking _weep._

Marco drives safely home and ducks into his apartment, pulling down the blinds.

I just lay on my couch and drown in my agony.

\--

It is fuckallsday with who the fuck cares days left, and I’m hungover as a motherfucker, my chest aching from the fucking carton of cigarettes I’ve blown through. I’ve been belligerently drunk for days on end. I lost fucking track. I don’t care.

Marco doesn’t love me anymore. There is no more light in my fucked up little universe. Why the hell should I care about fucking _anything_ anymore?

All I know is that the town’s in some kind of state of emergency. No one’s allowed outside without flu masks, and the police are enforcing it. “Unknown respiratory illness,” they say. Fucking bullshit. I know what that shit is, and it ain’t a pathogen that can be fended off by some weak-ass little piece of paper sheltering your breath.

I’m rubbing my temples, sprawled on the couch as I gather the strength to go buy more booze, when Eren pops up in front of me, pale and shaking. Like I fucking care. He could tell me the entire hospital just up and died and I wouldn’t fucking care.

“J-Jean,” he starts. Okay, so maybe that gets my attention. I look up at him, and then his nervousness seeps into me too. I’ve never seen him like this. I’ve seen him scared, angry, upset, but nothing like this. I sit up with a groan and look up at him. “Jean, something bad’s happening. W-we have to go.”

… Okay. I care. And I’m terrified.

I hold out my hand, and he grabs it in his clammy fingers, and he pulls.

When the world stops spinning and I’ve stopped puking my brains out into a nearby trashcan, I stand and wipe my mouth to look around. 

My stomach drops. I might puke again.

We’re in the hospital basement.

I’m not in Mar—in a dream, though, so the walls around me are real. The floor, the lights, all real. It’s nothing like the dreams, though. It actually looks passably functional. 

Orange biohazard signs line the hallway, so I look down toward the quarantine ward, and trepidation fills my being.

Eren starts out ahead of me, his steps quick and his breath loud.

The ward’s door is solid, and only recent, relevant orange signs adorn the painted windows. White, well-kept. I pull on the handle, and it opens, and I’m expecting hell, and—

It’s clean too. Not prison-like, either, but just like any other ward in the hospital. It was obviously scrubbed down or something before they started stashing people down here. 

The nurse’s desk in the center is vacant, files spread neatly across it. All I hear is faint beeping from the monitors. No shuffling, no talking, occasionally a cough filtering from behind closed doors. I look around, grateful for the change. I don’t think I could stomach the slice of hell I’d seen last time. The desk calendar tells me that it’s December 7th, and the stupid instinct to calculate informs me that there are twenty-four days left in the year.

Running my hand through my grungy hair, I look around until I find Eren standing outside of one room, his entire _being_ shaking at whatever he sees. I move next to him and look in.

Someone I’ve never seen, a teenager. He looks… kinda fucking dead, if we’re being frank. Sick, deathly pale, bony from malnourishment, glassy eyes half-lidded. A hazmat suit moves beside the bed, messing with his IV bags, and when the monitor starts going nuts and then suddenly flatlines, the suit just deflates a little and turns it off.

What the fuck.

The suit starts scribbling on a clipboard, looking up at the clock on the wall as it records the kid’s time of death.

I guess I know why we came, then.

I sigh and shove my hands in my pockets, turning to Eren, but his eyes are wide. His face is _pale,_ his lips shaking. Frowning, I turn back, and my eyes land on the soft little tendrils of light crawling out of the kid’s chest. The soul.

We watch as it climbs out and perches lightly on the dude’s flat, motionless chest, shivering slightly in the cool air of the room.

But then it shakes harder.

As I’m fucking watching, the thing twitches and spasms, and then it _melts._ Oh my _fucking_ god, my hand grips Eren’s bicep with crushing force, trying to shake some kind of answer out of him as it dulls and greys and becomes the odious pile of slime we’ve been fucking reaping for months. It slops off his chest and splats onto the floor, Eren’s loud, fast breathing fills my ears with static, and as we press against the window to watch it, we _watch it—_

_It turns black._

It darkens from the sludgy grey I know to the lightless pitch I wish I didn’t, and it spreads across the shining tile in a fucking _pool,_ and I’m gasping Eren’s name but he’s hyperventilating and he can’t hear me—

A hand.

A tar-black hand fucking comes up from the puddle. Like the hands that gripped Marco in his nightmare and dragged him into the murky lakewater.

The hand slaps onto the tile, unnaturally twitchy. It feels around for a grip before movement stirs the puddle again, and _a fucking head comes up_ out of the sludge. It blinks its hollow eyes at us, the movement slow and pushing mire from its eye sockets down over its face, and then another hand shoots out and flaps ataxic at the floor. Tarry handprints smear over the tile, and the hazmat suits pays no mind, recording, recording, and I’m _screaming, screaming—_

When the thing comes up and drips blackness from its hair, down its slender throat, across its shoulders, _it is fucking grinning._

It’s the teenager. It’s his soul. His rotten fermented _filthy soul_ becoming a Lost right in front of us, and Eren’s paralyzed, he’s terrified, _he’s not moving_ —he’s just whispering, “N-no, wrong, that’s— _wrong—”_

The kid pulls himself the rest of the way out of the puddle, twitchy and broken and oh my god _this is hell,_ this is the fucking end of the world. This is the Purge. This is what it fucking looks like. This is perdition.

He _lunges,_ too fucking fast to catch, and he slams his hands against the window and presses his grotesque shattered grin against the glass, and _I can hear him laughing._ It echoes hollow from under his door, a shrill cackle, the _joy_ of rising again as this damned fucking monstrosity. His hands scrabble at the glass like he’s on fast forward, head _twitching,_ nails scraping the glass, long, blackened tongue slapping over his cracked teeth and slicking them with rot, and then he blinks his huge empty eyes at us and _turns._

I’m screaming. I’m pulling at Eren and I’m screaming and there is no one who can help us and we can’t even help ourselves.

The suit hasn’t seen him. He’s seen the suit.

Oh my god.

The Lost _catapults_ himself over his corpse and onto the suit, knees gripping the neck as he leans into the person’s face, and _they finally fucking notice him—_

_‘It’s only ignorance that keeps the two worlds separate—’_

No no nononono

It happens so fast I almost miss it.

My wide, straining eyes, half of my vision a mess of violence and movement and _hell,_ barely catch the way the kid punches through the suit’s visor and delves inside, and everything after that is a _spray of blood and screaming._

The suit crumples and twitches, spastic, _dying dying dying,_ and the kid falls onto the suit’s chest and then _everything is fucking red—_

I’m screaming but my voice is cracking because I’m _watching the Lost gut the woman in the suit._ I’m _hearing_ her mutilated bubbling screams and the disgusting slippery _crack_ of her ribs as they’re shredded wide and blood sprays and fountains and _pools on the floor,_ she’s kicking, she’s _screaming, and the Lost—_

_**THE LOST IS FUCKING EATING HER.** _

My vision spins and I turn and vomit again, my stomach clenching and trying to get this image out of my head, I wish it was fucking possible to puke my brain out because the downfall is the survivors of the plague _being eaten a-fucking-live **she is being eaten alive are you fucking listening?!**_

Another arcing spray of gore marks the wrenching excision of some organ or another and while the blood paints and drips down the door and the window, a light comes with it, and it shoots through the window, between me and Eren, and as it flies between us it grows molten and dark and _oh my fucking god—_

How am I still screaming? How am I still breathing? How is Eren still sobbing as we both turn to look at the soul that had been flung out of the room?

We stare at it and watch it crumble, darken, spread, it’s a portal to hell and hell is _coming here and it’s **going to fucking EAT US ALL.**_

A hand comes up.

I’m sobbing too now.

“E-Eren—”

It slaps down against the tile.

_“E-Eren— **Eren!** ”_

His voice is so tiny I almost don’t catch it.

“Th-this is wrong—”

I spin him to face me and fucking _scream_ in his face. _“Of fucking course it’s wrong you stupid motherfucker **come on** —”_

“I-I-I c-can’t—”

I shove him if he’s gonna be fucking _useless_ to me, kicking him out of the way as the Lost starts coming up out of the pool. The scythe comes out, thank fucking _god_ I brought it, and before it can even think about moving I spin the blade and sink it right through the top of the fucking thing’s skull with a sick _crunch._

It stills.

I yank the blade forward through its rotten face, slicing it _disgusting,_ violence fueling my every movement, and its corkscrew soul swirls out of the crack in its demolished fucking _grin_ still half-submerged in its portal.

Reaching down, I yank it out, and I whip around to Eren, who’s still human and trembling on the floor.

_“Eat it!”_

“I-I c-c-can’t—”

_**“Eat it!”** _

I don’t wait for a response. I storm over to him and drop right into his fucking stupid useless Death lap and I smear the thing against his gaping, too-small mouth, leaving both of us streaked with filth and breathing too fast, too hard.

It pisses him off enough that he changes instantly, my hand just barely escaping the _snap_ of his predator fangs as his eyes fall out of existence and the void roars from his cavernous gullet. He tackles me then, hovering over me, and his mouth opens again, and _oh god, it stinks,_ it smells like _death and wrong wrong wrongwrongwrong—_

He’s gonna fucking _eat me—_

I sob, kneeing him feebly in the ribs, but a solid _crash_ distracts us both from the room, _the room._ We whip our heads over in time to see the door _shake_ with it, the sound echoing painful and ripping a gasping _shriek_ from me, _fuck it’s scary it’s so scary that sound I’m scared I’m scared— **BANG** —NONONONONO—_

Eren jumps off me just as the door _flies_ off its hinges and skids past fucking _two inches away from my fucking head_ —Eren catches the bloodsoaked Lost in his monstrous claws as it barrels out, and god god god please save me I’m so scared I’m so scared the thunder thunder _thunder—_

I’m screaming and Eren’s gripping the Lost and he fucking unhinges his massive jaw and yanks the thing forward and _sinks his teeth into it._ He’s got it up to the chest in his maw and I _see_ his mouth working, ribs _crunching and cracking,_ the thing’s nails tearing at his shark-like face as he _gnaws on its torso,_ and then he turns to me and flares his nostrils.

Fuck fuck fuck. Oh my _god._ I scrabble to my feet and feel around for my scythe, the gore from the first one no longer slicking my grasp around the handle, so I have the grip I need to set it spinning and sever the Lost’s body at Eren’s sharp teeth. 

Half of the Lost drops limply to the ground. Arms fall with a wet and sticky splat on either side of it. The soul wriggles out of where its fucking _spine should be I can see its **insides** —_

I grab it, he spits out the other half, and I cram the soul into Eren’s mouth and pull my hand back, and the void stops screaming long enough for Eren to close his mouth and _swallow._

It’s quiet.

Eren changes back slowly. Blood smears thick and dark across the floor from the crime scene in the room.

We stare at each other, panting and gasping and sobbing, and then everything is black.

\--

The Lost may disappear once reaped, but the ravaged, gutted corpse of the nurse does not.

Trost is placed under a real state of emergency the next day. No one is allowed outside at any time of the day or night. There’s a hotline to call if supplies are needed, but if anyone leaves their homes for any reason, they are ‘escorted’ back inside by riot-geared policemen.

This response leads me to believe that this was not an isolated incident. Armin confirms this grimly. Cairo’s already overrun.

On December 9th, twenty-two days left, the town is under full lockdown, and I cross the hall to Marco’s apartment and knock on his door with a badly-shaking hand.

“M-Marco,” I call softly, my voice still weak. “Marco, you don’t—you don’t have to see me. But I need to know that you’re okay.”

To my genuine shock, he opens the door, his face pale and bags under his eyes, hair standing on-end. The news plays in the background, near-constant coverage from anchors trapped by the quarantine in their studio. His gaze is hard, withdrawn, his forehead pressed against the side of his door as he stares down at me.

“Did you do this?”

The accusation is deserved, but it fucking _guts_ me regardless. I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head.

“I d-didn’t. It’s above me to be able to do even if I wanted to.” Cautiously, I peer up at him again, my lips shaking. “I j-just have to clean it up. Before it gets w-worse.”

His brow furrows, his body still half-hidden behind his door. “What do you mean _worse_?”

Sighing into my hands, I take a minute to fucking compose myself so I don’t just break down on his doorstep. “It’s not just a flu. That’s why the town’s shut down.”

“So, what,” he laughs, running his hand through his hair as he comes out from behind his door. “You gonna try and convince me that it’s some kind of—what, a zombie apocalypse?”

His cruel laugh dies out when he sees the misery on my face. 

I don’t have to convince him. Not between my expression and the frantic emergency broadcasting. 

He lets me into his apartment and makes us both tea, and we drink it as I struggle to keep myself away from him, to keep myself from blurting out how bad I’ve missed him, how much I love him, how sorry I am.

I explain as much as I can to him without complicating things with shit like reincarnation and fate and _roles._ Just that there is a God, and they are malevolent as fuck and desperate to cut down on the numbers, and this is how.

Normally, I wouldn’t expect anyone to believe me. At all. This is fucking madness, I know it is.

There’s a long silence when I’ve said all that I think I can say, and I’m curled up at the end of his couch and shaking.

“And you had nothing to do with this?”

I sniffle and shake my head, picking at the edge of the cushion I’m haunting.

“But you’re the only one who can stop it.”

“I can’t stop it,” I mumble, closing my eyes. “It’s everywhere. I can try and keep it from getting… t-too bad, I guess. But there’s nothing I can do.”

Another silence. I would cry more, but I’ve long since run out of tears, I think. My head hurts from sobbing.

“Jean…”

I open my eyes and peer cautiously at his mouth, his teeth chewing his lip. Swallowing nervously, I look up further, force myself to meet his eyes, fully expecting them to still be hard, unaccepting, _hateful._

But they’re not.

They’re just rimmed with tears.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot. You know, going over this whole… the whole year. Thinking about it.” His fingers grip his mug tightly. “I couldn’t hear what you were saying while you were… before you came down. But I saw you talking to someone.” He swallows. “Was that… him?”

“E-Eren. Yeah.”

He looks me over more, gnawing further on his chapped lips.

“You really didn’t ask for this, did you?” I shake my head slowly. “You just… died in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I nod. He sighs, resting his now-empty mug on the floor. “I Googled that word you used, _ankou.”_

“O-oh.”

We stare at each other for a long time, trying to come to terms with this bizarre, otherworldly bullshit we’ve both had forced down our unknowing throats.

When he unfolds himself and slowly crawls across the couch, I drop my guard and let him in. When he kisses me, it’s so soft and loving, and some modicum of understanding comes between us.

It turns desperate fast, with the distance and hurt falling away with passing hands and shed clothing, our lips sealed together except to let loose soft moans and sweet, pained nothings, hurried ‘I missed you’s and ‘I love you’s and ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ and we hold each other impossibly tight as we make love and the world comes down in ashes around us.


	11. Don't Swim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am weak.
> 
> It's okay.
> 
> And now I just sit in--

The police shutdown makes my job extremely difficult. Eren’s agitated, and he’s not the only one, because if we aren’t fast as hell about reaping souls…

Fuck the Purge. Fuck the Architect. Who the fuck comes up with this kind of bullshit? What kind of twisted mind puts together this kind of riddle? It’s just not enough to fucking cull us all, but it has to be done George- _Fucking_ -Romero-style too. This is _bullshit._

Eren’s tired of my ranting. He’s scared, too, because this apparently isn’t how Lost are made.

On December 17th, with fourteen days left, two _fucking_ weeks exactly, Eren’s pacing and I’m chain-smoking.

“They’re _lost souls,_ dude,” he tells me, scraping his hands through his messy hair for the thousandth time. “They wander for _years_ and darken slowly as they get angry, and then when they break and lose their humanity, that’s when they turn.” He bounces his knee, sitting down just long enough to sigh twice before he’s pacing again. “The virus is taking a decade of human rage and cooking it down into a few weeks or fucking less.”

“And worse,” Armin pipes up from my windowsill, his face buried in a huge, musty tome. A mountain of books surrounds him, leafed through and annotated, pieces of the puzzle leather-bound and badly yellowed. “It sounds like some of these people aren’t even exhibiting flu symptoms.”

“So what?” Eren kneels on the couch and leans over the back toward Armin. “Why does that matter?”

“It means _anyone_ can be infected,” he murmurs, his tired eyes flicking up to us. “And we might not know until it’s too late.”

“I-is there any way to tell?” They look at me as I ask, midway through lighting another cigarette. I appear to have picked up the bad habit. Not like it fucking matters. I’m already dead, and the ache in my chest distracts me. “If they’re not fucking… coughing or whatever.”

They both know I’m thinking about Marco. Armin closes his book, setting it to the side in favor of a smaller, fatter one. “Does his soul feel different?”

“No.”

Armin sighs and scratches his cheek. His wispy bangs are slowly sliding out of his messy bun, getting in his face again. “There’s no way to know for sure. Especially with those nightmares…”

My hand shakes around my lighter, but I manage to light my cigarette and exhale a flustered cloud of smoke. “There has to be something. A fucking… a _test_ or something.”

“I think you might just have to have faith in him,” Armin says quietly, peering up at me. “It’s not much, but it’s the best we have.”

I swallow and stare down at the ember burning through paper and tobacco. I just want to keep him safe… that’s all. He shouldn’t have to see this shit. I fucked up.

Better manage my fucking mistakes.

“Armin,” Eren rumbles, blinking widely at the librarian. “What are you doing?”

Pursing his lips, Armin considers his pile of texts. Come to think of it, he hadn’t mentioned it. He just kind of dropped into my apartment and no one questioned him. I don’t mind, it’s a third opinion, but now that Eren brings it up, he’s been tearing somewhat voraciously through those books and pestering me for pens, like I fucking have any.

“This sort of thing has happened before.” I raise my eyebrows, as does Eren, and Armin looks up at us again. He pulls his hair tie out, golden strands glimmering in the dying sunlight before he ties them up again, tighter this time. “Pandemics mark waves of death all throughout human history. Tuberculosis, plague, leprosy… hell, with the way these things—Lost, you call them?—with the way the Lost look, doesn’t it kind of make you think twice about the _Black_ Death?”

I furrow my brow, ashing my cigarette over a lumpy clay ashtray I’d stolen from the lobby. “I thought they called it that because of the fucking…” I wave my hands. “The _gangrene_ or whatever.”

“That’s what they tell you, isn’t it. Think that’s all there is to it?” Armin gives me a pointed look and crosses his legs, and a chill runs down my spine. Fuck that. Fuck _all_ of that.

“So, what,” Eren starts, crossing his arms on the back of the couch. “You’re saying all these pandemics are linked?”

Armin sighs, raising his eyebrows, then gives a reluctant shrug. “I’m tempted to believe it, yes. Why would some organic system exist whose sole purpose is to destroy its host? It’s inefficient. Goalless.”

“Well, they want to spread, right?” I rub the back of my neck as I ask, staring out the window. “Propagate, or something.”

“They can do that without obliterating the host,” Armin mumbles, examining his nails. “It just… I don’t know. It trips me up. Always has.”

Eren shrugs, looking between us. “So why does it matter?”

“As far as written history can tell me, none of these pandemics has ever done _this_. Not only does it destroy the organic host, but it creates a soul husk that serves only to kill humans. It’s so targeted at mass extinction, you know?” Armin looks up at us. “It’s almost like a complete demolition in and of itself. And then with Marco… if the virus itself or its aftereffects don’t do the job, Marco’s Lost is supposed to awaken something that _definitely_ will, if we go by what Bertholdt said.”

My cigarette burns down to the filter, so I grind it out a little rougher than is necessary. “What the hell could possibly do that?”

Armin stares at me. “I have a theory, but you _really_ do not want me to answer that.”

I snort. “Try me.”

The way his lips curl into a dark smirk kind of fucking _terrifies_ me, if we’re being honest. It’s like I catch a glimpse of some ancient madness hidden in his old soul. “You ever read any Lovecraft?”

Chills. 

My eyes widen. Normally, I’d laugh it off, but I’ve seen enough shit in this last year to make _anything_ believable. I wave my arms again, breaking that train of thought before it leaves the damn station. “Never mind, you’re right, do not tell me. I don’t fucking wanna know.”

Satisfied, Armin leans back against the window and pinches the bridge of his nose. “This Purge… it’s looking more and more like it’s aiming to wipe humankind off the earth, not just cull them. I’m trying to figure out why.”

Quiet settles between the three of us for a while, with me and Eren staring at the floor while Armin looks out the window.

The hamster’s running, but the wheel is stuck. It has to do with the Architect, I know it does. It’s their fucking plan, anyway. But why? Why now? I squeeze my eyes shut and think, think, think. It’s making my brain hurt. I’ve always been fucking awful at puzzles. 

Why create such a fucking horrible vehicle for extinction?

Eren’s breath catches. Armin and I look at him, eyebrows raised, and he squints at his hands. “It seems senseless. Needlessly violent.” He looks up at Armin, and something passes between them before Armin’s eyes widen impossibly.

“Wh-what?” I look between them.

Armin swallows and licks his lips, sitting up cautiously. “The Architect… they’re always the planner, right?” Eren nods. “So they always plan everything, including things that are horrible enough to rip a hole in reality. Like the old gods did, before we took over. So the violence that devoured the old gods, that was planned. All of it.” My head’s fucking _pounding._ “So what if this is the same thing? They’re aiming for something as horrible as… as that to break open reality again.”

“But _why_?” I rake my fingers through my hair. “You’re saying they _want_ to die?”

Eren looks at me out of the corner of his eye, foot jittering rapidly. “Everyone gets sick of their job.”

I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes before I pull my cigarettes out of my pocket again. “So what does this have to do with the pandemics?”

Armin shakes his head, tucking his bangs behind his ear. “It’s almost like they’ve tried before, but they never really hit the level of _bad_ that would crack time open. The other diseases, they’re like…”

I breathe smoke. “Like test runs, or something.” Pulling off my cigarette again, I blink at them. “Experiments.”

Eren and Armin freeze before they slowly turn to stare at me, the horror on their faces fucking _dizzying_. They know something I don’t. 

I don’t wanna fucking know what that is. 

Somehow I feel like I’m not gonna have a choice.

For now, all I know is that Armin buries his face in his hands, and Eren bites his lip so hard it goes white as he fails to keep tears from spilling down his face.

What the fuck.

\--

Armin doesn’t leave my apartment. For some reason, he seems reluctant to go back to limbo, but I’m not gonna question it. I have learned to enjoy my blissful ignorance while it fucking lasts, and I want to spend it with Marco.

We stay by each other’s sides almost constantly, given that we’re not allowed to go anywhere else. Instead, we pass the time twined on his bed, touching everywhere we possibly can, idly re-memorizing each other before we inevitably have to give up. 

He asks me questions, and I answer them as honestly as I am able, even if I have to stutter through my explanations and wave my hands and stare at the blankets between us. He deserves that much.

I tell him every detail I know about the Lost, from how they look to how they change. His hands shake in mine when tears streak my face and I beg against his lips for him to stay away from them, to run, to hide, _anything_ to save himself. The only detail I leave out is how they slaughter their prey. That’s entirely mercy on my part, the deception fueled only by my unwillingness to allow him to imagine that.

He tells me he thought long and hard about me, and how scared he was. He tells me that he tried to make me something less human, but that he couldn’t. He tells me that he had some kind of breakthrough in the shower the other day, but that understanding what I’d said didn’t stop him from being terrified.

He _trusts_ me, though. He trusts me to know what I’m doing.

_I_ don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing.

If nothing else, I can try to be here for him. I can try to be present for as long as I am able, even as I resist the urge to start counting hours instead of days.

When we stare into each other’s eyes, held close together in our safe, warm little world, it almost feels like the world around us doesn’t matter.

Almost.

\--

So far, Eren and I have been quick. Even if it involves sprinting from the cops with armloads of rapidly-darkening slop, then porting out of existence, we’re quick about it. We’ve managed to reap something like seventeen souls in the dark over the last week before they could turn to Lost. There was one terrifyingly close call where Eren had to tackle me off the roof of the hospital while I rammed the soul down his throat as we fell, but even my horror of falling can’t outweigh the fear of that grey turning to pitch.

On December 19th, twelve days left to my being, heavy military trucks rumble through the foggy, abandoned morning streets of Trost, driven by men in fucking full-on gas masks.

The news assures us that the military is just here to offer ground support to our insufficient police force. They’re here to help guard quarantine zones and protect vital infrastructures from potential ‘incidents.’

Given how fucking silent the streets are, the complete lack of sound pressing thick into my sharpened ears when I’m breaking curfew to catch a soul, I kind of have trouble believing them. Even the wildlife have abandoned this damned place. There are no rustling squirrels, no flapping birds, not even the scampering of a rabbit or a fox. It’s just… vacant. Empty.

It makes moving around in the dark really fucking hard.

I’m not really trying to find out what the business end of an AK feels like.

The next day (eleven left), Eren and I discover that both roads out of Trost have been blockaded with low cement walls, and masked soldiers keep their hands on their guns and their fingers off the triggers as they staunchly defend the checkpoints.

Trost is a prison.

There is no escape for us.

\--

“Marco,” I whisper against his lips, the chill of a winter Sunday holding us together with ten days on our clock. “I-I need to tell you something.”

He hums into me, kissing me softly and sliding his palm down the bare curve of my spine, his tender, tired eyes blinking open to meet mine. I search his gaze, wondering how the fuck to even begin this conversation. 

There’s no avoiding it, though. I have to tell him. 

I fucking have to.

Swallowing nervously, I adjust to lean my forehead against his and let my eyes slip closed again. He nuzzles my nose with his while I gather my words, my courage, and the feel of his warm fingers sliding across my skin gives me some minor strength. Even so, my voice comes out a croak when I rasp, “The ankou thing isn’t permanent.” His hands don’t stop their gentle memorization of my ribs. “At the end of the year, I’m gone for real.”

I’d expected that to give him _some_ kind of pause. I thought I’d hear the hitch of his breath breaking the silence between us, or feel a tremor spread into his traveling fingers, or _something._

“I know,” he whispers back, leaning in to brush his lips against mine. “’S what the internet said.”

Oh. Right.

My eyes open again, flicking up to his dark under-eye circles, his heavy eyelids twitching from too much coffee and not enough sleep even as they rest over his hot, exhausted eyes. He pulls me closer and kisses me again just as I catch a wet glimmer sticking his eyelashes together. 

“Where will you go?”

“I have no idea,” I mumble. I stroke my thumb over his cheek, breathing his warm air and growing dizzy from it. “What’ll you do when I’m gone?”

“I’m not sure yet,” he hums, shifting against me with a little ‘pop’ from his knee. 

Sighing again, I duck my head to bury my face in his sweet-smelling neck, the arm around his waist squeezing him tighter. “I want to stay with you.”

“Me too.” A silence again, before he breathes a dry, melancholy chuckle. “I don’t suppose I could come with you? I was kinda supposed to anyway, right?”

When I don’t answer him, he doesn’t prod me. When I wrap him so tight in my arms that I crack his back a few times, he doesn’t make me let go. 

When my choked, hitching sobs turn into full out, violently-shaking _bawling_ , he just runs his fingers through my hair and buries his own tears against my temple, and it feels like hours before either of us stop.

\--

The military came to Trost in the company of some sort of ranking bigwig, presumably for strategy purposes or whatever. Someone with the big boy pants to push the big red button, more like. I have no inclination whatsoever to believe that anyone ranking above yellow belt would have a reason to come this tiny shithole full of dead old people.

On December 22nd, a mere nine days remaining, Marco’s laying his head comfortably in my lap as we watch a press conference with said bigwig. His name is Brigadier General Dot Pixis, which is a fucking ridiculous name for a decorated warchief, but whatever. The bald guy on the TV screen, littered with shining medals and a strong stance, tells us all that the country is in a state of emergency. 

There are ‘concentrated areas’ scattered along both coasts, he tells us, and Trost is one of them. The United States Armed Forces are attempting to produce a presence in each of these areas, to offer support and aid to Americans who desperately need it. He’s come to Trost, he says, because he believes that a large quantity of recent international travelers, including several Persons of Interest, may live here, and that the CDC would like to request the cooperation of these people for optional testing. He must mean Bertholdt.

I have genuine fears about what they’d do to him if he stepped up. I wonder where he is now, anyway. I haven’t seen him since the dream.

Pixis wraps up his speech with some inspiring crap about the strength of homeland soil and the resolute nature of the American people, listen to your local and national law enforcement, blah blah blah. People who aren’t me might have an easier time feeling better about what’s going on, but the international and afterlife reporting haven’t exactly been promising.

The floor at the press conference opens up for questions, and I busy myself running my fingers through Marco’s soft hair, spreading it dark over my weedy thigh.

_“Brigadier General Pixis! Sir, does the US Department of Defense have plans to initiate drone strikes in the city of Cairo?”_ A disheveled-looking reporter tries to keep his voice steady as he asks, even though the hand he’d held up to be called had been trembling noticeably.

_“All branches of the US government are in constant communication with the city of Cairo and its martial government. The United States will continue to extend its full support during their time of need, while still prioritizing the welfare of our own citizens.”_ Way to dodge the question entirely.

_“Brigadier General! What about the reports of swarms of undead creatures coming out of nearly every major city on the globe? Media sources are referring to this crisis as ‘Day Z.’”_

The corners of his eyes wrinkle before Pixis responds, but any sort of smile must have been hidden under his neat silver moustache. _“Recent allegations of any undead presence have yet to be confirmed and are deemed ‘unfounded’ by United States government officials. The CDC is working tirelessly to ascertain the psychotic nature of this pathogen, and any danger to US citizens will be made immediately public should any be found.”_

_“If not swarms of undead,”_ says a panicked-sounding woman near the front, _“What exactly is happening in Cairo? Cell phone media has shown a massive sweep of unnatural violence all across the city, and the apparently supernatural nature of these attacks cannot be ignored!”_

_“The United States is keeping tabs on these reports as part of the open communication with Cairo, and martial government officials have yet to give a confirmed report indicating any sort of unnatural factor in the viral epidemic sweeping the city.”_

_“Cairo’s been overrun! What will it take for these incidents to come to light? What if this violence breaks out on US soil? You said yourself, there are hot zones—”_

Pixis holds up a hand to call for quiet, which works eerily well to soothe the rabbling press. _“There are areas of interest on US soil that are being closely monitored and quarantined when necessary, with the cooperation of local law enforcement and federal armed forces. As of the start of this conference, the United States has experienced nothing resembling the reports coming from international media.”_ I don’t bother to contain my loud, derisive snort, and Marco quirks a dark smile at me before he turns his attention back to the TV. _“Media sources are being carefully analyzed for factual accuracy, both at the Pentagon and at military depots in other countries.”_

_“Brigadier General! Should an outbreak occur, does the Department of Defense have a plan of action?”_

_“The United States Strategic Command is working tirelessly to monitor pathogenic vectors in areas of interest to predict the outcomes of quarantined areas. With these efforts, any incident can be quickly controlled. In the extremely unlikely event of an uncontrolled outbreak, the United States Armed Forces will quickly execute evacuation and sheltering plans, as well as protective operations with utmost priority on preserving uninfected human life.”_

_“What about those in the quarantines?”_

It’s subtle, and I only catch it out of my weird eye, but Pixis’s nostrils flare. _“Those affected are being treated by well-trained health care professionals and CDC representatives in all areas under viral quarantine, and patient monitoring will continue tirelessly around the clock to ensure that we stay one step ahead of this pandemic. Thank you for your time.”_

Pixis leaves amidst a storm of shouting and waving hands and camera flashes, the press shouting shit about ‘Day Z’ and ‘martial law’ and ‘how can we protect ourselves?’

I sigh, running a hand down my face.

Before I can open my mouth to say anything, I feel Eren pop up behind me, and I immediately pull the hem of my baggy sweater over Marco’s face. He squawks and flails slightly while I look over the back of the couch.

“He’s lying.” Marco stills when Eren speaks, sinking further against my stomach. 

“About what?”

Eren crosses his arms, and I raise my eyebrows at him, still sheltering Marco from his damn reaper face. “Everything, but mostly the quarantines. They aren’t being treated.”

I groan. Wonderful. “So, what, then? They’re just getting chucked down there?”

Shaking his head, Eren crumbles slightly, staring down at the floor. He’s keeping his distance from us for Marco’s sake, which has to be fucking killing him. He’s such a physical person. I run a hand through my hair and sigh again. 

“I sat in on their planning meeting,” Eren mumbles, twisting his hands in the hem of his shirt. Marco shifts in my lap, trying to hear. Maybe I should put a damn bag over Eren’s head or something. “There was a whole plan in place already, if you can fucking believe that. Only needed minor edits.”

My eyebrows shoot up. “A zombie defense plan?” Eren nods. I squeeze my eyes shut and groan. Well, that’s something, at least. Weird, more than anything else, but at least they’re prepared for anything. “So what’s up with the quarantines?”

Eren looks at me again, his face fucking _miserable_. “If another ‘incident’ happens, they’re going to ‘eradicate’ everyone in the quarantines. All of them.”

I can _feel_ myself paling. They’ll kill them all at once. 

And when they die…

“Oh, fuck,” I breathe, and Marco squeezes my knee, understanding now the implication there.

“That’s not even the worst.” Eren rakes his hands through his hair and takes a deep breath. “They’re still performing mostly defensive actions now. But if the threat becomes too much, they’re going to pull the military out of the hot zones. Then they’ll authorize bomber strikes in all of the fucking cities with quarantines all down both coasts.” He looks up at me, his eyes hot with anger now, too. “Whether they’ve been evacuated or not.”

Marco’s breath catches. I’m gaping. 

If they slaughter the patients, those Lost will break out of the quarantines.

If the quarantines break, millions of people will die to air raids.

Every one of those people will turn.

My mouth is dry. My ears are ringing with my banging pulse.

“They have no idea what they’re doing,” I manage, my voice weak and disbelieving. I don’t wanna fucking believe this. If any one of us fail in any of these quarantine zones… 

Eren bites his lip and lowers his glare to the floor.

“E-Eren, what’re we supposed to do?” I turn toward him more as I ask, shifting Marco on my lap. “What can we do?”

“Nothing.” His eyes squeeze shut, fists clenched with white knuckles at his sides, shoulders tense. “There’s nothing we can do. It’s the _plan.”_

My stomach sinks, my body still floating in this weird, surreal state of denial. 

It’s my first instinct to try and stop it, even though I know I can’t do anything.

I turn to look down at Marco, who’s peering up at me from around the edge of my sweater. His face is pale.

What can I do to save him?

What can I do to save fucking anyone?

\--

I can’t just accept this bullshit. There’s no way. Why should I have to watch the world burn and fucking sit there with my thumb up my ass just because it’s part of some _plan?_

I spend a day breathing heavily into Marco’s lap and clinging to him, and then I start brainstorming.

As reluctant as I am to have Marco in on these unearthly pow-wows, he insists on trying to be helpful. 

“If everything was planned,” he’d said resolutely, “Then I must have some reason to still be here. Maybe I can still do something.”

I had stared at the floor as he’d said so, but nodded miserably. I’ve already been in a thousand circles around that and found nothing but cowardice and Cthulhu, so I’m not about to go on another fucking go-‘round. 

The compromise is that we sit in my smoked-out apartment full of books and not much else, the couch pulled in front of the closed bathroom where I have Eren and Armin locked away because their faces scare people.

… Let me have my humor.

“What if we fucking— _talk_ to the Architect,” I say for the thousandth time. “There has to be another way for them to quit their job.”

“Jean, you can’t _quit_ being God,” Eren grouses, still irate from being remanded to the bathroom. “And this… person, they’re really fucking stubborn.”

I sigh loudly, leaning my head back against the couch and fiddling with my lighter. Marco had wrinkled his nose at me and my bad habit, and after making excuses for about four cigarettes I remembered that his dad just died of lung cancer. That was enough to knock the craving right out of me, along with a mountain of fumbled, graceless apologies. 

“What if the air strikes work?” I’m fucking fumbling at straws. Leaning forward toward the bathroom door, I rub my hands over my tired face a few times. “Do bombs work on lost souls?”

Armin hums before he answers. “I really doubt it. They’re solid, but even just killing them with the scythe doesn’t do anything. They can come back from it. If you don’t reap the souls, you don’t get rid of them.”

“How can they come back from being bombed?” Marco chews his nails as he asks, slowly getting used to the idea of talking to ancient death gods locked in a tiny bathroom. “Surely that’s enough?”

“You’d think so,” Armin replies softly, cautiously. Marco seems to have warmed up to Armin a little faster, but he also hasn’t ever seen his face. I wonder what it would look like to him. I didn’t even chance it, choosing to be preemptive for once when I’d shoved him in there after Eren. “They can survive all kinds of dismemberment, explosions, fire, dro—w-water, poison… basically everything. And they can survive for _decades_ , given that they’re not really organic in the sense that you’re familiar with.”

Marco sighs and leans back into the couch, crossing his long legs under himself. “How do you know all this?”

A long silence.

“Experiments,” comes Eren’s flat response, and there it is again. The horror. The step I’m not quite putting together in this puzzle.

Cherish the ignorance.

I reach over and rest my hand gently over Marco’s, letting him wiggle until our fingers are twined tight on the couch between us, and loving solidarity spreads warm from the ladders of our knuckles.

\--

Christmas comes. 

I wasn’t really big on it for most of my adult life, but Marco’s always loved it. We don’t have presents to exchange. Kinda hard to go shopping when the military’s camping the damn lobby.

Instead, I wash the smoke smell off of me and we spend the day in his bed, trying not to think about anything but each other.

When I cry into his warm, sweat-slick shoulder, my legs wound tight around his waist, I don’t have to tell him that it’s the last Christmas I’ll ever see. That it’s the last Thursday I’ll ever see. That in six days, I’ll never see anything again.

Marco doesn’t ask, either. He holds me close and squeezes my hands and lets me cry, whispering into my ear that he loves me, how strong I am, how proud of me he is, how much he trusts me, how well I’ve done, how far I’ve come…

I don’t know how he can stand to rock his hips into me when I’m soaking his shoulder with tears and sniffling and gasping, how he can stand to keep being this close to me when there’s probably snot involved, but when he adjusts us together just _so_ and presses warm kisses lovingly along my throat, my head falls back into the sheets, and for a bare moment he helps me forget everything and lets me just _exist_.

Please…

I would give anything. _Anything._

Let me save him.

\--

I wake up on the 26th, five days left, and the bed is empty and cold beside me.

Immediately, panic lights my bones on fire. I crash through Marco’s apartment before I barrel across into mine.

Startled, he stares at me over his glasses, his hair still on end from sleep, taking in my still-heaving chest and my hands gripping the door with white knuckles.

“J-Jesus,” I wheeze, crossing over to kneel next to Marco on my couch, slinging an arm over his chest as I bury my face in the nape of his neck. The short hair there still bears the light salt of his sweat. The way it spreads across my lips and my tongue soothes me.

“I’m sorry, Jean,” he murmurs, reaching around to wrap his arms around my thin waist. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long.”

I look up at him, then over my shoulder at the closed bathroom door. “What’re you doing?”

“Nothing!” His cheer catches my attention, the brightness of his voice out of place in the muted melancholy of my apartment. “Just had a few more questions, and you looked really comfortable. I didn’t wanna wake you.”

The way I squint at him does not escape him, and he fidgets with all the immense guilt of someone who just got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

“I’m gonna go make coffee,” he says, kissing my lips, my cheek, my temple as he stands, his hands reluctant to leave me even for this brief time. He does, though, pushing up his glasses as he slips across the hall and into his apartment.

Yeah fucking right.

I stand, grabbing a pair of my jeans that’d been slung carelessly over the back of the couch and shoving my legs into them before I barge into the bathroom.

It is seven in the morning on December 26th, 2014, with one hundred and thirty-seven hours left until the end, and Eren and Armin are holding trembling hands in my bathroom and not bothering to stop the tears dripping down both their faces.

\--

“It’s not mine to tell,” Armin says, his lips shaking.

“You should just fuckin’ ask him,” Eren growls, scrubbing at his flushed face.

“I can’t t-tell you, Jean,” Armin stutters from behind Eren’s shoulder, the brunette standing firm between us.

“You probably already fucking know,” Eren spits, his face this wet, awful mixture of pain and anger.

I try to scream in his face some more, but the words don’t come. I end up heaving gasping sobs into the cold bathroom tile at his feet. Can’t even fucking put words to why I’m crying anymore, but I am entirely unable to stop myself. 

All I know is that Marco snuck over here to ask Eren and Armin the kind of questions that left them holding each other and weeping.

The tears don’t stop when Eren crouches and runs his fingers through my tangled hair, nor when he leans over me and rests his cheek on my shaking back, trying to silently comfort and be comforted.

Somehow, I don’t doubt Eren. I just don’t want those questions to be what I think they are.

_‘Jean—’_

I don’t want it to be that.

_‘Do you think I can make it?’_

Not that.

Marco knows he’s supposed to be dead. He’s well aware that he’s outlived his time. He’s cheated Death for three hundred and sixty days, even if it’s by Death being guided by a fucking scrub, and if I have to look him in the eye as he asks again to come with me at the end of the year, I think I’ll just wither into ashes where I stand.

I can _see_ him accepting it. I can see the fear falling from his eyes and the shakes falling from his strong hands and his broad shoulders. His cheerfulness against Eren’s and Armin’s sobbing does not escape me. They love him _so much_ , so devotedly, it confuses and alarms me somewhat. I catch the tail end of a whispered conversation between them cherishing his strength and _‘—he always was this way—’_ and I don’t want to know.

As the next few days pass in steady warmth and hazy winter daylight, followed by cold nights slipping silently through the dark streets, I don’t ask him what his questions were because I’m too afraid of what they might be, even more so of what the answers could be. I try not to think about what the fuck I’m supposed to do when my time is up, because I can’t kill him and I cannot let him die.

Instead, I spend the days holding his firm hands and kissing his soft lips and wishing we could go out in the rain, because it looks so nice pattering and pooling gently against the cracked alleyway stones, just like when I lurked outside his window earlier this year.

It’s not much, but he is perfect, and this is the closest I’ve gotten to true happiness in a while.

I _hate_ how brief happiness is.

I fucking hate how little time I have to keep my blissful ignorance about the end of days.

On December 30th, somewhere around seven pm, there are twenty-nine hours left until the end when Eren’s eyes widen, then fill with tears. He turns to me, gritting his teeth and breathing hard, and rasps, “We need to go.”

\--

I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

My whole _fucking_ life, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I will try… I will try to tell you what happened.

I will make no excuses, no matter how much empathy I have. I will try not to lie about why I steadied my hand, nor about why I let it falter. I will try not to lie when my cowardice overpowers my logic.

In return, please just try to understand.

The last hours of my unlife were nothing but exponentially worsening, rotting, flaming terror and a long series of thoughts that honestly scare me.

And now they’ll be yours too.

\--

When we land in the hospital’s basement again, I wish I could say I’m surprised. I wish I could say I hadn’t expected this to happen. It’s _the plan_. It’s orchestrated perfectly so that humanity’s violent fear of dying would propel us into oblivion, and so that nothing in creation can stop us from falling into chaos. Why not bring us here, then, to witness the demise of the town that I was born in, that I grew up in, and that robbed me of my sad little existence?

This time, Eren does not charge ahead of me. He stands beside me in the hallway, his eyes dull and dead, and when I say his name I kind of doubt it even reaches him.

I wish I’d said goodbye to Marco. He’d been curled up at the end of my couch, exhausted after hours of learning and pondering and tripping over the same cracks as us. I’ve never seen someone take so much ibuprofen in a two-day period, and I’d worry more about his liver but for the circumstances.

Eren swallows loudly and grabs my hand again, but rather than pull me anywhere, this time he just squeezes. I squeeze back, attempting to show my solidarity even as fear begins to bubble up from under the static.

We walk to the end of the hall, to the quarantine ward, and find that it’s been locked over and chained shut. I pray to god they haven’t started this yet, _please_ not yet. Just wait two days. It’s all I ask. Wait two days to trigger your own demise.

I’ve always been unlucky.

Eren grabs the chains and _yanks_ , and they come off frighteningly easily under his crushing grip, taking a door handle with them. 

I don’t know what I was expecting on the other side of those doors, but the hell-version of the ward was _not_ fucking it. I _know_ I’m not in a dream. Eren’s here, everything else is normal, nothing mirrors Marco’s madness here, and when I blink, the ward is normal again, but I’m already gasping for air.

“I think,” comes a distantly familiar voice from the nurses’ desk, “That it worked this time. Los Angeles has fallen, poor creatures. Can you feel it? The old scars opening?”

Eren’s shaking so hard I wonder briefly if he’s having a seizure.

The person stands up from the desk and turns away from us with a sigh, closing a thick book and stretching. They’re extremely human, thin and somewhat graceful, and their body trembles and pops as they unfurl from their previously-hunched position. They hold up one hand and spread all five fingers, then slowly tick them down like they’re counting seconds.

When their hand clenches into a fist, they state, “Portland has fallen. Oh, I _feel_ their pain, it’s like I’m right there with them…”

Ice. 

My guts clench, my eyes widen, Eren’s fucking _breaking_ my hand, and I’m choking. If LA and Portland fell—

“Within twenty-four hours, the rest will fall as well,” the person says grimly, and then they turn to face us and the memory comes up clear from what feels like a million years ago. It’d only been May.

I can’t even remember their name.

Eren’s sobbing.

_“W-why?”_

They blink at Eren, seeming to have a moment of crushing regret, before they come out and lean against the desk in front of us. “It’s vile, I know it is… but you don’t remember like I do, Eren. You, Armin, even Erwin and Levi… when it becomes too much, you get a reset. You get to put your memories away, where they can’t hurt you anymore.” They run a hand through their messy bangs, pushing them off their tearstained face, and then I fucking remember. “I don’t.”

_Hanji._

The sound around us pitches into white noise. The thunder is coming.

Erwin’s deep voice, admonishing like it’s something he’s _used to—“No experiments, Hanji—”_

I have to _breathe._

“Y-you—” I choke out, taking a step toward them. They blink at me, crossing their thin arms over their chest. _“You’re the Architect.”_

“Yes.” Hanji cracks their knuckles, leaning off the desk and sliding their hands into their pockets. Fidgeting.

“You did this?!”

They nod, casting their pained gaze to the bloodstained floor between us. “I did.”

_“What the fuck—”_

“I don’t expect you to understand, Jean,” they murmur, eyes sliding shut and setting forth another wave of tears. “Especially not now, when you barely remember a fraction of what you’ve seen. Even when you’re outside of the mortal coil, you only distantly remember our past.” They look at me again, their red-rimmed eyes dark and _haunted._ “I remember _everything.”_

Their foot starts tapping out a slow beat on the tile, their bare toes making only the slightest sound, but the _pat pat pat_ is intensified around me, clamoring and _painful_ , like the fucking _thunder_. Around us, reality spasms, breaking and flickering and _tearing_. 

I look around, looking for people, looking for Eren, looking for _anything_ , but my eyes show me conflicting images and my head _explodes_ in a migraine that knocks me to my fucking knees. The world is spinning, _spinning_ , and squeezing my eyes shut only makes it fucking worse.

My good eye shows me the hospital as it is.

My bad eye shows me the prison under the paint.

I retch and cough, my fingers yanking at my hair, and with every _pounding_ beat of Hanji’s wardrum feet, the animals locked in the prison wards _crash_ against their decaying metal vaults in a rhythmic bid to escape, their faces are _fucking horrible_ , and I _can’t fucking get away because they live behind my fucking eyelids—_

I want to go home. 

I’m gasping, panicking, the world exploding under my hands in thunder and fireworks, and I can’t tell if I’m sobbing or _dying—_

“Things need to die,” Hanji says quietly, their reverberating voice piercing my skull like a fucking _spear, it hurts, they’re so fucking loud_ —“Nothing is meant to live forever. Humanity least of all. And sometimes when you’ve lived too long, _felt_ for too long, you stop seeing the horror.”

Eren’s shouting something, but I can’t fucking understand him over the din, and rolling onto my back does nothing to ease the _shrieking howling pain_ , my fucking head is _gonna fucking explode_ , my heels scrabble at the tile and I arch up in agony, my teeth gritted around pained screaming, my hands trying to crush my skull out of existence, _everything is fucking thunder—_

“Hanji, th-there has to be something— _anything,_ you’re not fucking _like this, this isn’t you—”_

Oh, oh, they’re _angry,_ I can _feel it and it hurtshurtshurtshurthurts—_

“I can’t do this anymore,” they _growl_ , and it shakes the fucking _foundations of the earth it **hurts—**_

But when they speak again, it’s the short sob of a truly broken soul, the bruised, fragile waver of the damned. 

_“I just want to go home.”_

Their foot is still _beating,_ still riling up the fucking _undead hellhounds_ clamoring at their pens, and Hanji sniffs and wipes the moment of weakness right off their fucking face. “Waking this _thing,_ this evil… that would be enough to do it. But I might not even need Marco, with how this looks…”

My teeth are gritted so hard they might fucking _crack_ but I manage to peel my eyes open to look up at Hanji as they spread their arms wide, and for one fleeting, horrifying second, both eyes show me the same hellborn image as reality twists and staggers with a deafening _hum_. Then the images are disjointed again, and I’m gasping for air, writhing in pain, and Hanji points a thin finger at Eren.

“I’m really sorry about this, Eren… but you’ve been an incredible subject as well. Thank you.”

Hanji curls their hand into a fist and _yanks_ , and Eren’s cracked scream blocks out all sound and shrills high into earsplitting static and then I am fucking _deaf._

I don’t have to hear the wet _squelch_ of his clotted blood and his thick bile hitting the floor. I don’t have to hear the vile sounds of him puking up a hundred corkscrew souls, his choked shrieks of agony as they wrest themselves from his wrecked, crumpled body. Blood pours from his mouth and his nose and his eyes burn black in the silence, and tar just keeps _fucking ejecting from his lips and all I hear is white noise—_

The pressure _spikes_ with a cavernous _whum_ against my deafened ears, and the hospital spasms into madness again, flickers white, _madness, like a fucking heartbeat,_ and the Lost Hanji had just ripped from inside Eren writhe on the floor and _take fucking form oh my god—_

“Please…” Hanji whispers over me, their voice piercing the mute din as they lean over me and break again into that delicate creature crumbling under the weight of their own sins. _“Please forgive me.”_

Then they stand, and I watch them, helpless on my twisted back on the floor, my world turned upside-down as reality fractures and decays around us. 

Hanji spreads their arms wide again and _exhales_ and it comes out as bright _fucking red smoke_ like nothing I’ve ever _fucking seen_ , and their eyes behind their glasses spread black like the Lost themselves, and Hanji is overcome.

They slide backward along the rotted hallway, pulled by some fucking _evil_ force, and every door they pass _explodes_ and _crashes **thunderous**_ against the opposite wall, I _fucking **hate** that sound I’m **sobbing—**_

They hit the end of the hallway, arms spread wide like Peter crucified upside-down in my vision, and they sink into the floor and they are gone.

The door slams open at the end of the hallway.

Eren’s unconscious or _dead_ beside me, gaze glassed and unfocused and dead blood and mire congealing thick in rivers from his mouth and his nose and his _eyes_ —I’m screaming but he won’t get up and I can’t even hear my cracked, weak, _useless_ voice in the volume of the _fucking heartbeat of this hellish place—_

Reiner Braun storms out of the last room.

He’s _fucking huge._

His skin is white but for rot-mottled hands, his eyes pitch and hollow, his entire being _radiating_ this awful Lost power as the rest part like the shallow sea for him to walk up the hallway, his footsteps echoing and reverberating _maddeningly_.

I roll out of his way, flopping over Eren’s corpse and hiding behind it, and Reiner Braun calmly presses his hands against both ward doors. 

One’s still locked.

He _rips it right the fuck off the hinges and fucking throws it what the fuck **what the fuck—**_

The Lost pour out of the ward, sprinting out the door and crawling up the fucking walls and over the ceiling _like fucking insects, a fucking thousand of them,_ and Eren is _dead and—_

_Marco._

There is nothing left for this world because Reiner Braun is going to shatter this fucking quarantine unleash the starving downfall and everyone in this _fucking town is dead but Marco—_

_“Eren!”_

I sob his name as I shake him.

He’s dead.

Death is fucking dead, gutted and emptied of all the broken souls we’ve reaped and any that were there before me.

Squeezing my eyes shut, the ward’s lights flickering brokenly against my good eye, I take a bare moment lean over him and rest my forehead against his cold temple, and shakily whisper my apologies to him.

I’m sorry, Eren.

_I’m so fucking sorry._

He twitches.

Jolting upright over him, I slam him onto his back and stare down at him, watching his rolled-back bloody eyes flicker under the snapping lights.

In my bad eye, I see him mouthing something. Nothing in my good eye.

So I close it.

_‘Run,’_ he mouths, struggling to keep his human form. My eye widens as I read his lips further, and he doesn’t have to fucking tell me again.

My feet pound against the tile of the hallway, desperate to put as much distance between us as I fucking can while I still have time.

_‘R un, or I’ll dev o ur y ou’_

The hallway’s much shorter than last time, and this time when I burst into the lobby, I see flickering orange and blinding searching spotlights and the hospital doors are fucking _destroyed and I hear screaming and gunfire—_

_**Marco.** _

There’s a dead military guy on the floor, his soul already vacated and strengthening the damned masses. 

Eren’s voice echoes in my head. _‘They’ll pull the military out.’_

Military convoy.

I rob the corpse of as much shit as I can carry, enough to convincingly make a soldier of Marco, to get him the _fuck away from this place._ I can’t kill him. I can’t take him. And even if I could, the fuck would I do with him? _Eren’s losing it!_

Get him out. Gotta fucking get him _out._

I tear through the burning streets of Trost, sweat pouring over my skin from the flames and the exertion and the _panic,_ outrunning them as they flood the streets, as they fucking _pour from the home and the graveyard, oh my god, we **failed—**_

Get Marco out. Get him out. _Get him out._

I somehow make it to our building without being fucking _shredded alive._ Crashing through the locked lobby doors, uncaring for the shards of plate glass that embed themselves in my skin and slash at my clothes, I sprint up all the stairs and down the hallway, and then I’m slapping my hand on his door and screaming his name.

“Th-there’s a convoy, on the edge of town, I heard about it, s-saw the military heading for it, _come on, baby, please—”_

“J-Jean— _okay,_ okay—”

Before he puts on the clunky mask, I take his face in my hands and kiss him desperately. “I can g-get you there, baby, but you gotta be b-brave for me, okay?” He nods against me, slow and reassuring, but I can’t stop fucking babbling. “I n-need you to be brave for me, Marco. I’ve got you.” 

“Okay, Jean.”

My eyes squeeze shut around tears as I tell him I love him and beg his forgiveness for my cowardice. I am weak. He gently rests his hands over mine and kisses me softly, sweetly, calming me down and warming me and letting me breathe, and before I pull away I realize that his hands are not shaking.

I am weak.

I can’t take him.

Not even if he wants me to.

He pulls the respirator on over his mouth and nose and nods, and I check for my scythe, and thank god he can run as fast as I can, because we’re fucking gunning it down the stairs and onto the ruined streets.

People are _everywhere._ So are their fucking corpses.

Buildings are on fire, helicopters scream overhead, and there are people screaming as they flood down the street and run in any direction that could conceivably be _away._

They’re being fucking _hunted._

Everything moves in jilted fractions of seconds, my own punching gasps muting the fucking gunfire in my ears as I drag Marco down the street at first, as he comes face-to-face with the fucking _horror_ of it all, and then as he keeps up sprinting behind me. He stops looking back after the first time he sees someone go down under a group of Lost. The first time he sees blood run in rivers over rain-slick concrete.

I stop running, though, when I check behind me and find what I’d hoped to god I’d never have to see.

_Eren._

Eren as he was in Philadelphia, I realize now, when he nearly devoured me and Mikasa both.

It’s _that_ Eren, fucking _huge_ , fifty fucking feet tall at least, his hair wild and his jaw unhinged and his eyes a fucking gaping abyss.

He _roars._

Everyone on the street goes down under the force of it.

Marco stares up at him, then at me, eyes wide and filled with tears. 

I grab his hand and haul us to our fucking feet and keep running.

When we hit the convoy meetup, they’re already fucking _leaving_ , kicking up mist in their blood-spattered vehicles as they scream into the night and leave all of us behind this bullshit chainlink perimeter they’d put up to keep us contained.

Reiner Braun has other plans for them.

I try not to watch as he fucking _barrels_ past us in the street, blowing a hole in the goddamn barbed wire fence like it’s a puff of smoke, and when he catches the slowest military jeep, he fucking _rips it open with his horrifying monstrous hands._ I can’t fucking watch him reach in and crush those peoples’ heads like _goddamn fucking grapes_ , so I turn the fuck around.

I’m gripping the sides of my head and fucking trying not to scream for Marco’s sake, but containing it is shredding a hole in my fucking chest from the inside. 

I can see Eren up the hill, silhouetted by the moonlit clouds as he clenches his enormous claws around entire fucking _groups_ of writhing, tar-black Lost, but more than that, I see something in the air behind him.

A plane in the night sky.

Marco takes off his mask slowly, staring up at the thing flying overhead, before he drops it and turns to me.

I must still be reaching for him, trying to save him, trying to do _something_ , but he looks at me and _fucking smiles._

Oh, Marco—

“It’s okay, Jean!”

Something’s _falling, the plane dropped—_

_**No—** _

Marco’s so peaceful—

_“It’s okay.”_

Then his eyes close, he’s still smiling, I’m still screaming and rooted in place like we’re both drowning again, and then everything is white.

\--

Going out felt like blinking.

After the whiteness fades and the ringing in my ears has dulled to a roaring whine, I open my eyes again. Trost is a hollowed-out wasteland, and reality is a shattered husk.

I am dead again.

I can _see_ the fucking rends in space, I can _smell_ the fucking void everywhere around me, and all the trees and the buildings and the _humans—_

Everything is gone.

Bombed.

Souls turn to ash and then to tar around me but for a few who shimmer and quiver in terror in the shadows under the insufficient waxing moonlight, and urgency fuels me once more.

I jump over a pool between us and reach down to grab Marco, who stands out to me in the wreckage. He’s still light, still warm somehow, shuddering under the weight of the darkness even as he winds between my fingers.

Not a Lost.

Eren’s on a rampage. I don’t have time.

The scythe is gone somewhere, so I sprint up the hill toward Eren with my breath thundering in my ears and my heart cracking against my ribs as I dodge the rising downfall and wrench out of slick mired grasps with Marco’s soul.

He’s roaring at the cleared-out sky, the hole blown out of the clouds revealing the black night sky. His jaw is wide, and the sound from inside him is harrowing and scratchy, digging into my ears.

_“Eren!”_ He _howls, fuck,_ the sound fucking _explosive_ in my ears and laced with the whining _shriek_ of static. “Eren, Eren, this one first! Come _on!”_

He turns to stare down at me, his empty eyes narrowing and his lips curling back over his rotten teeth in a _snarl._

I press a kiss against Marco’s soul, anywhere, _anything_ , and tendrils of his warmth stroke my hands and my face, just like they had at the beginning. This brief moment is gonna have to do. For god knows how long. I breathe love into his light and reach my hands out to Eren, desperate to keep his attention, and Eren’s monstrous jaw drops.

He _inhales_ Marco. He swallows.

Marco is gone.

I could fucking pass out, but I have shit to do. I need to make sure others follow. I can’t let Marco become this, and Eren can’t do this alone.

Or so I’d thought, before I watch him crouch and catch a sprinting Lost, most of its body still unformed from the bomb’s blast. He grabs it and easily rips the remains in half, and he fucking _drinks its black blood_ before he sucks its fucking soul out of its wriggling corpse.

He throws the husk down with a wet _crack_ , the thing splattering on the pavement like a fucking water balloon, and then he _howls again_ , the sound miserable and _deafening._

When he draws a deep, booming breath, the remaining souls that are still light come to him like fireflies, and he swallows them down like nothing until none are left. Only the Lost, ravaging the streets and devouring charred, indistinguishable corpses. 

They do not hunt me, not without my corporeal form. They’re too fucking _hungry._

I watch them rend crunching, crackling flesh with their grinning teeth and their twitching fingers in a daze.

When I look back up at Eren, he’s licking black muck off his impossibly sharp teeth.

Then he’s looking at me.

Oh.

I stare up at him, and he narrows his sunken eyes and turns to me, crouching before me monolithic and horrifying.

He opens his mouth and _roars_ in my face. I feel calm acceptance creep into my bones.

I close my eyes. The abyss shrieks. And then…

Silence.

 

_The End._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_(The low hum of white noise._

_I swear to god, Marco, I will find you._

_Wait for me.)_


	12. Epilogue: The New Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's stupid to expect to feel different at the start of a new year, I know.
> 
> Surprisingly, I do.

I awake to my alarm cheeping, _‘Thursday, January 1st, 2246. Happy New Year, Jean,’_ and roll to shut it off before it can remind me of my civic duty. I waffle for a few moments longer, cherishing the slept-in warmth of my thin sheets before I flop out of bed with a sigh and cross into my bathroom.

The mirror comes to life with the snap of the light switch, delivering the reminder I’d silenced a few minutes ago.

Like I can forget.

Groaning, I reach out and drag my fingers down the screen, sliding the reminder to the corner so I can see my tired, scruffy face. 

I look like hell.

Another strange dream, that place where it always rains. Not at all different from here, but somehow much sadder. Somewhere, though, someplace in that desolate town, there’s warmth and light and laughter.

I run my hands down my face, scrub at my eyes, then grab the straight laser resting behind the tap to shave. The blue light of the blade does my appearance no favors, so I hurry it up.

It’s New Year’s Day, the first day of the year 2246. 2245 is behind me now. 

Kind of a stupid thought, but I don’t feel any different. Just tired.

Yesterday was rough, though, the last day of the year. Apparently, there was a time in history once where people celebrated the closing of a year and welcomed the new one. Fools. 

Now, it’s a day of solemn remembrance. The day when, two hundred and thirty-one years ago, humanity had succumbed to near destruction in the wake of The Downfall. We learn about it in school, and we hide behind these _immense_ walls we’ve built around ourselves, monstrous circles of thick steel and heavy turrets to keep the Lost at bay.

Satisfied with my de-scruffing, I put the laser down and grimace now at my bed-mussed, obscenely red hair in the mirror. Standard uniform for Remembrance, but I’ve never really cared for how much the color brings out my pallor. 

I tap the mirror and scroll through the menu until I hit the color I prefer, then reach up and run my fingers through my hair, nails dragging down over the shaved sides. Blonde streaks after my hands until my bangs fall once again to my brow a dull gold, like they should. Much better. I shake my head and lean forward, making sure I got everything, before I close out of that and bring up the glowing red reminder from the corner.

 _‘Good morning, Jean,’_ the mirror says in its calming voice. _‘Your appointment is today, as scheduled by the Civic Records and History Department.’_

“I remember, thanks,” I grumble, attempting to exit out of it. It just pops up again, though. 

_‘Please report to the CRHD at ten am for your Unwinding.’_

_“Thank you,_ I remember.” It lets me exit out this time, and I lean on the sink and groan. 

Eren’s appointment had been a few days ago. He’d been all cocky about it, like he was personally offended by everyone who’d come out of the procedure trembling and pale, but by the time he came out of his Informing and Debriefing hours after he’d gone in, he was shaking like a leaf.

He still hasn’t stopped apologizing to me, nor crying. It’s freaking me out.

I slide out of my bathroom and over to my closet, whirling through the options on the screen until I find my civilian garb. The closet grumbles and spits out the grey button-down, the white pants, and the tall leather boots. I grimace at them; the boots make my fucking legs sweat, no matter what time of year it is.

It’s raining, same as every other damn day, but my mobile heads-up display generates a barrier above me so I can smoke in peace on my way to the CRHD.

The Unwinding is a recent discovery from the Civic Research and Development Department. Apparently, if they demethylate certain tightly-wound sections of DNA within the confines of specific neural circuitry, they can unlock memories of past lives. Or something. We’ve been trying to tap into those for something like fifty years, so it was cause for some excitement. I’m still glad I wasn’t assigned there after school, though, it sounds like mind-numbing work. I’m happy in Civic Programming. Really.

Once it’d been deemed ‘safe,’ anyone with DNA traces to the year of The Downfall was given compulsory Unwinding appointments to have those segments opened up and analyzed. Guess that means me, huh.

They’re trying to create a solid record of what happened, as well as searching for any way to rid ourselves of the damn Lost scourge. Satellite images tell us that there are areas all over the globe now that are recovering well from the nuclear fallout, and if not for those undead assholes, we could feasibly move outside of the walls. 

I’ve seen so many pictures of the ocean. I’m kind of curious about what it actually looks like, sounds like, smells like. Old archival memory files just don’t cut it, not as cracked and aged as they are. Armin’s even more intent on it. The way he talks about it… can’t help but feel a little antsy myself.

It’s only possible, of course, if we find a way to eradicate the menace outside the walls all at once. We’ve long since given up fighting them. They’re fucking animals.

The train ride across the city to the CRHD is short, as usual. I roll through the marble lobby of the massive building, projecting my green-lit HUD ID to the bored-looking guards, and take the elevator up to the waiting room.

I’d expected it to be packed, honestly, but there’s only one dude against a small army of uncomfortable plastic chairs. He looks like a nervous wreck, better not be a damn talker. Too early for that shit yet.

When I slump into a seat across from him, I put on my best ‘don’t talk to me’ body language, closing my eyes and bouncing my foot. It doesn’t work. Of course. The guy leans forward, clearing his throat quietly, and says, “Are you here for your Unwinding?”

Peering at him out of one eye, I stare at him long enough for him to quail slightly, and that’s about when the guilt sets in. I sigh and lace my fingers on my head, opening my eyes properly. “Yep.”

“M-me too.” He bites his lip and rubs the back of his neck, then shifts closer and extends his hand to me over the coffee table. “Marco Bodt. Civic Hydroponics.”

A beat passes before I find myself shaking his hand, surprised by the firmness of it, and replying, “Jean Kirschtein. Civic Programming.”

“Nice, nice,” he says, rubbing his finger under his nose briefly. “Sorry, uh. I guess I’m just kind of nervous, you know? I babble when I’m jittery.”

I shrug, lacing my fingers behind my head again and looking him over. Dude’s a freckly mess, his dark hair a minefield of cowlicks. Choosing black hair is kind of ballsy, given the long-standing history behind the color. I’ve only known Mikasa to have that kind of scrote. I wonder if Marco Bodt here can live up. “It’s okay,” I mumble finally. “I think most people are.”

He breathes a sigh of relief and smiles warmly at me. I feel myself relaxing under it. Weird. “I’d imagine so, if they paid attention in school. That’s a scary part of history, you know?”

I nod.

I hadn’t actually fucking thought about it.

Great. Now I’m fucking nervous too, between that suddenly-obvious connection and Eren’s profuse, tearful apologies.

“Marco Bodt?” The receptionist comes out from the side room, and Marco stands, nodding at her. She gives him a pretty smile and tucks her gingery hair behind her ear. “Dr. Berner will see you now.”

“Thanks, uh.” He turns and gives me a sheepishly anxious smile, fidgeting slightly. “G-good luck.”

“Hey, you too, man,” I reply, leaning forward to watch the girl take him back.

I bum around for a while, scrolling through the Civic News on my HUD while I wait. I hadn’t even noticed how damn early I was. When ten-of rolls around, the little receptionist comes out again, calling my name and smiling at me.

My stomach turns, but I flick away the news feed and follow her back.

\--

I wasn’t ready.

I should have been more fucking nervous.

 _God,_ it’s fucking _horrifying._

After the procedure, they let me curl up in the corner of the room and roll through what I used to know well as a ‘panic attack.’ I’ve never had one. Apparently, I used to. _All the time._

Eventually, they ease my twitchy corpse into the Informing and Debriefing room, my frantic brain alight with images of Eren and Armin and Hanji and the _fucking Lost, oh my god—_

“I w-watched it,” I wheeze, gripping the edges of the table tightly in my sweating grip. The receptionist, Petra, leans forward and her face brings _agony_ to my swirling, chaotic thoughts. “I watched it h-happen.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

I do. I tell her everything.

But the whole time, my mind is focused on his smile. That beautiful, gorgeous smile that I hadn’t appreciated nearly enough when he’d flashed it to me in the waiting room. That same damn freckle by his left eye, disappearing in its laughter lines.

_I fucking swore I’d find him._

When they let me go, I beg them for a release waver for work today, and I must look like fucking fresh hell because they give me one without question. I forward it through my HUD, and then I’m fucking sprinting through the shining halls and onto the lobby train toward Civic Hydroponics.

Please be there, Marco. _Please be there._

I remember _everything._

I jitter on the train as it zips to the plant farm, down and across and then up, up, up above the carefully-controlled nuclear winter to where the sun still has power. 

Now that I know what world my dreams stem from, where there were _trees_ and _fog_ and _Marco, Marco, Marco,_ this place is so _fucking_ bizarre, so… science-fiction, like those words mean fucking anything to me. There was a world once where I’d _held_ that guy, where we’d kissed and whispered to each other and run through the streets in a rain of blood and hellfire, and above all else, _I swore I’d find him._

I cannot let him slip through my fingers. Not again.

When I fall off the train in the blinding light, my HUD adjusts my eyes to it as I cope with the fucking _dizziness_. How can he stand this every day?

I flash my HUD ID to the guard, but it flashes red and I skid to a halt.

“You don’t have clearance, sir,” the guard monotones, and I grip the desk in sweaty fingers and try to catch my breath in huge gasps.

“M-Marco Bodt. I’m here to see Marco Bodt. Is he here? Can he page me in?”

The guard raises an eyebrow. I know I must fucking look insane, but _dammit_ , I used to look like this every fucking day. And somehow, Marco fell in love with me. His living dead boy.

“B-Bodt,” comes the shaky voice from the guard’s screen, and before he can say anything, panic shocks my system. 

I jump onto the desk and crawl on my stomach until I’m hanging upside-down over the screen, breathing desperate and hoping to god that he recognizes me, that he _still wants me, fuck_. “Marco!” His eyes widen, and I slither forward more, bracing one arm on the desk, oblivious to the sputtering guard. _“Marco, Marco—”_

_“Jean!”_

“P-page me in, baby, page me in, I’m so sorry—”

His hands beat frantic at his desk and his face flushes with tears as he hits the button and my ID turns green. “Ninth floor, arboreta—”

“Stay there, I’m coming, I’m coming, _fuck—”_

I shove backwards off the security desk and land on my ass, scrabbling against the smooth tile until I get my feet under me and I can sprint up the hall, following the signs past exotic, humid greenhouses and long-extinct plants that ring familiar within me now. When I hit the elevator bay, I punch the button so hard it cracks, but fuck it. Maintenance droids can handle it. I slide into the elevator, slamming the _‘9’_ button for the entire four-second ascent, and when the doors open I fall out of them and tear up the wide hallway.

This floor… trees and bushes burst like fireworks with beautiful sprays of flowers and low-hanging fruit of all kinds behind wide windows, and I could fucking cry. He’s cultivating _fruit._

I hadn’t asked which damn fishtank he’s in, but somehow I don’t need to.

I rip down the hallway, following signs for the pear arboretum, and through my gasping, sobbing breaths, I scream his name, uncaring for how much fucking noise I’m making.

He bursts out of a chamber at the end of a hall, the steel doors barely open and pouring out decontaminating mists, and he whips his head toward me with wide eyes and a pale face.

_“Jean!”_

We collide mid-hallway, wrapping tight around each other, and my momentum overpowers his and sends us toppling to the floor. I don’t care. I don’t fucking care.

_I found him._

His pear trees shine bright and fruitful behind the tall windows lining the hallway, symbolizing fucking salvation and longevity, and when his lips find mine again, I feel the calm spread through both of us like we’ve never felt. Not in this life.

My hands dive under his lab coat and wrap around his waist, pulling him tight against me, and we’re both trying to talk and kiss at the same time but it’s not fucking working, so we give up on talking for now and just kiss desperately. 

Marco buries his hands in my hair and sobs against my lips, his legs wrapped tight around me, pulling me closer, and _god_ I never knew how fucking _badly_ I needed this before right now. 

I feel complete.

Like a wound I’d never noticed before is suddenly stitched closed and healed over again, I’ve never felt so fucking _whole_. Not here. Probably not in any other life where Marco and I don’t grow old together and live long, fulfilled lives in each other’s arms. 

_“I missed you,”_ he manages, and I pull away to rest my forehead against his. “Oh god, I know that’s weird, we kinda just met earlier—”

I shake my head and kiss him again, unable to get enough of his lips against mine. “No, no, _fuck_ I missed you too—”

“Jean,” he whispers shakily, pressing kisses across my cheek, along my ear, into my hair, which must smell _atrocious,_ like sweat and panic—“Jean, I love you, I love you—”

“I love you too, Marco, _fuck,_ ” I rasp, burying my face in his neck and wrapping tighter around him, and if I cry a little I am sure it’s fucking valid in this instance. “I _swore_ I’d find you.”

“You did, you did,” he chokes out, his breathing shaky and hitched in my ear. “Thank you, Jean…”

We lay wrapped around each other in the hallway until Marco’s pear trees give an irate hum and rustle their branches at him, something that is completely normal in this time but would have made the me from that other time flip his shit. I’m reluctant to leave him again, as if leaving now would separate us for another two centuries, and I see my hesitance mirrored in his perfect, beautiful, gold-flecked eyes.

Marco takes the rest of the day off, being apparently in much better graces with his boss than I am with mine, and he takes me back to his apartment. It is, once again, a mirror image of mine. The thought makes me laugh even as I tackle him onto his bed and work on kissing every part of him that I can manage.

We start to make up for lost time as the constant rain hammers against his window, and with every blessed second he is pressed against me, I pray to whatever god is out there now that they just let us be this time.

\--

Several consistent, reliable accounts had pointed to the brilliant head of Civic Research and Development, Dr. Hanji Zoe, as the being that had long ago created the goddamned Lost. After the shock settled, they had the good grace to undergo the Unwinding in an attempt to find whatever will undo the scourge that keeps us locked within these walls.

The attempt drove them mad. 

Not the same ‘mad’ usually attributed to their kind of genius. The kind of mad that sends chills through your guts and drives you to beg for forgiveness.

Reportedly, they’d bled. A lot. And screamed.

No one likes to think about it. I can understand, though. Their past lives were but one life, and that one life had lasted an eternity and dragged out their madness so long that the only way for them to escape the horror was to attempt to destroy the species. 

And then they’d been forced to remember it all, after successfully forgetting.

It takes a while to decode their ramblings, but reportedly the Lost can be dismantled without much damage to the already salted earth outside the walls. 

There’s another tidbit that means nothing to anyone but me, Eren, and Armin.

“It worked,” Hanji had sobbed into the recorder, blood smeared thick down their face from their nose and dripping onto the floor. “It worked, it worked. _We’re free.”_

The three of us nurse beers one night, thinking too hard for too long about that, until Eren orders a round of shots and holds one up.

“To being free,” he says somberly, and Armin and I nod. We all take our shots in memory of Hanji’s brilliance, and in memory of our collective torment.

We’re free of being _important people_ now. Eren is no longer Death, Armin is no longer the Archivist, and I’m no longer whatever the fuck I was. Marco didn’t end all of creation, and Hanji succeeded in going home, even if going home meant being punted out of Purgatory and back into the cycle of reincarnation.

We drink to that a few times more, our solemn solidarity almost passing for melancholy.

Marco meets me at the bar when he’s done work, and he lets me pull him into my lap and hold him and just breathe him in for a few minutes.

It worked. We’re free.

After two hundred and thirty-one fucking years, _I’m finally home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you.


End file.
